His name was Geoff, and we met sometime in the late 90s when we both went to the same beginners evening classes in beekeeping. He'd already tried keeping bees, and remarked benignly that he thought it was time to learn to do it properly, now he'd had a go under his own steam. We all used to take mugs along to the class, so that in the break we could make tea, and I found out he had been a dentist because his mug was a freebie from a dental supplier. Other than that he didn't talk about work very much, as the beekeepers tend not to do, but I am sure he must have been a brilliant dentist. He had such a calm, gentle manner that any patient would have relaxed instantly, and believed that nothing he was going to do would hurt too much.
Colchester crematorium was packed for the service, with people standing at the back of the room and crowding out into the lobby. His family filled a couple of rows at the front, but most were friends, people who were there simply to pay their respects to a remarkably nice and humble man they had been lucky enough to know. Geoff was interested in all sorts of things, sailing and fell walking, botany and natural history as well as beekeeping, music and poetry. If he recommended a book to me it was as likely to be about Jane Austen as bees.
He had a talent for friendship. Some of the mourners were fellow dental students and colleagues from his time training and working in London over forty years ago, and had remained friends for all those years since, and been drawn into other adventures, like the sailing. Geoff climbed Kilimanjaro once, I learned today. I didn't know that. And I finally discovered his age, eighty one. I would have put him in his eighties, since he was already retired by the time I met him, but he was always so active that some of the other beekeepers present had assumed he was younger.
The service captured pure essence of Geoff, with tributes from his wife of over fifty years, his son and his grandson, and the vicar who was also a grateful former patient. There was Albinoni, Chopin, Vivaldi, Yeates, and the hymns For the Beauty of the Earth and Lord of All Hopefulness. The coffin was made of woven willow. The family have received so many cards that even the postman remarked that Geoff must have been a popular man.
He was a very, very nice person, and today was a celebration of a life well lived as well as a sad farewell. I shall miss him, though, knowing that I won't hear his voice breathing hello behind me at the next Colchester Natural History Society meeting I go to, or see his face break into a smile as he comes into the room at our monthly beekeeping evening meeting, or his chair drawn up next to mine at the annual barbecue. Always gentle, careful, calm, inclined to look for the best in ever situation. In one of today's tributes somebody said that they never heard him say a bad thing of anyone, and in the case of Geoff, I think that is actually true. I knew him for sixteen or seventeen years and never once heard him say anything harsh or horrid about anybody. A kind and lovely man.
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