WHAT does it say about a person who has only been in the borough for ten years, that the great and the good of the borough turn up on a cold and rainy wednesday morning to pay their final respects to a community champion.
Mourners gathered at St Thomas’ of Canterbury on East Thurrock Road. Each aisle was filled. Thurrock MP Andrew Mackinlay and his wife Ruth, Thurrock Council Corporate Director for Adult Social Care, Lorna Payne. Members of Trust, flanks of Gurkhas, councillors and officers and dozens of members of the voluntary groups too numerous to mention. Police Superintendent Alan Cotgrove was also joined by Acting Chief Insp Rachel Wood.
Most importantly, Luz’s beloved daughter, Georgina presented a moving eulogy reflecting on the life of a woman who had an indomitable spirit and seemed like a person from a bygone age. We may not see her like again.
Conducting the service, Father Brian O’Shea spoke warmly of the woman from the village in the Phillipines who never seemed to be fazed or worried but took every challenge as an opportunity to serve her community.
The funeral cortege made it’s way to Chadwell Cemetery where mourners paid their final respects. Someone else paid their final respects: as for those twenty minutes it stopped raining. We suspect someone has started tugging at God’s sleeve already!
Finally and fittingly, mourners made their way back to the Beehive in Argent Street for a buffet. Somehow it just didn’t taste the same…
