As he would have wished, the funeral – conducted one week later by the Reverend Toddy Hoare in the nearby village of Felixkirk – was a quiet family affair. As well as the immediate family, only Donald Sinclair, his daughter Janet, Alex and Lynne Taylor, their daughter, Lynne, too, and Eve Pette, Denton’s widow, were present. A small service was conducted afterwards at the crematorium in Darlington.
On the day after he died, the James Herriot Library was due to be opened at the Veterinary School in Glasgow. I had agreed, at the time that it was proposed to him three months before, to accept the honour on his behalf.
When they heard the sad news, the Veterinary School suggested that the ceremony be postponed, but I felt that it was something that I had to do. This was the last honour he had received – and one that had meant so much to him. It presented me with an emotionally challenging task but I had a feeling of great pride when I saw my father’s portrait looking, almost poignantly, across the library and out of the window to the Campsie Fells where he had spent so many happy hours in his youth.
On either side of the plaque in the James Herriot Library there are two photographs, one of Alfred Wight and the other of Sir William Weipers – two very famous graduates who made enormous contributions to their profession. I have often wondered what my father would have thought, all those years ago as an insignificant student at Glasgow Veterinary College, had he known that one day he would be pictured alongside the man he had so admired? I feel sure that he would have been a very proud man had he lived just those few more days to have seen it.
My low spirits following my father’s last days were not improved by the death, shortly afterwards, of Donald Sinclair. Donald had had an emotionally turbulent few months. The death of my father had hit him so hard that he could not summon up the courage to speak to me until a full week later. When he did, it was in typical fashion. The telephone rang in my house and when I lifted the receiver, a voice said, simply, ‘Jim?’
‘Yes, Donald?’ I replied.
There was a long pause, which was unusual for such an impatient man. When he spoke, his voice was unsteady. ‘I’m fed up about your dad.’
I had no chance to respond. The telephone went dead. It had been the briefest of conversations but I knew how he felt – and what he had tried to say.
Worse was to come Donald’s way. His wife, Audrey, who had been failing for some time, died that June, three and a half months after my father. Donald had been totally devoted to her throughout their fifty-two years together and, following this devastating blow, he seemed like a lost person, drained of all his humour and vitality.
One day not long after Audrey’s death, he walked into the surgery in Kirkgate and stood beside me as I operated on a dog. He had always been a startlingly thin man but, on that day, he seemed to have shrunk to almost nothing. That gloriously volatile aura of eccentricity was absent as he stood quietly, observing me at work. The wonderful character I had known for so many years bore little resemblance to the old man at my side, and I felt a pang of sympathy as I glanced at his face – one that betrayed an air of loneliness and hopelessness.
Suddenly, he broke his silence. ‘Jim, do you mind if I come and live here?’ he asked quietly.
‘These premises belong to you,’ I said, ‘so you can do what you like.’
‘I have always wanted to live in that top flat. Looking over Thirsk to the hills – the one where your mother and father had their first home,’ he continued.
‘Yes, there is something very nice about the flat,’ I replied. Although I knew that Donald had become depressed living alone in Southwoods Hall, I hardly expected him to move house at such an advanced age.
‘I’ll move in tomorrow,’ he said, and disappeared as suddenly as he had arrived. It was the last time that I saw Donald Sinclair alive.
The following morning he was found, at Southwoods Hall, in a coma. He had taken an overdose of barbiturate, leaving a scribbly note indicating his desire not to be resuscitated. His children, Alan and Janet, were soon by his side and, after five days of heartache and uncertainty, he finally passed peacefully away.
Surprisingly, for such a mercurial man as Donald, his death was, in some ways, predictable. Many years ago, when I first joined the practice, Donald had once talked to me about his enthusiasm for voluntary euthanasia, with the conversation eventually becoming focused upon death and final resting places. For a young man of twenty-four, it was a rather disconcerting subject.
One of Donald’s acquaintances had recently suddenly died at a Rotary Club luncheon, and I had said to him, ‘It’s not a bad way to go really. He was a good age and he died at his favourite pastime – eating!’
‘I know a better way,’ Donald had said.
‘Oh? And what is that?’
‘Shot in the back of the head, at ninety, by a jealous husband!’
He had continued our slightly morbid discussion with, ‘When I die, Jim, I would like to be buried at Southwoods in that field below the pine wood near the third gate, the one that looks up to the hill.’
‘I think that would be a splendid place,’ I had replied.
‘Do you really think so?’
‘Yes, I do!’
I have never forgotten his spontaneous reply, ‘I’ll save you a place next to me!’
Donald did not die at the hand of a jealous husband; his own hands were to finally end his life as he remained true to his lifelong dedication to voluntary euthanasia.
In July, a memorial service for Donald and Audrey was held in Thirsk church, followed by refreshments at Southwoods Hall. I felt heavy-hearted as I gazed around the grounds of the fine old house where I had spent such good times but, as my eyes rested upon that grass field below the pine wood at the foot of the hill, I could not help smiling as memories of Donald flooded back. He had been one of the most engaging, as well as impossible, men I had known. The traumas that we experienced while trying to persuade him to retire when well over eighty are still fresh in my mind, and many people have said that no one but Alf could have worked with him for so long, but he did have many special qualities.
Only weeks before my father died, I had been listening to him reminiscing about his life with Donald. I asked him how he had coped with Donald’s eccentricities over all their years together, and he paused before replying.
‘I don’t really know,’ he said, ‘but I can tell you this. We had a hell of a lot of laughs together and, from the first day I met him, I knew that he would never stab me in the back.’
He became immersed in thought again before continuing with his appraisal of his unforgettable partner. His face broke into a smile. ‘Where else would I have found such a wonderful character to weave into my stories?’
My own overriding memories of Donald are of a man who would never do anyone a wrong turn, a loyal colleague who did not speak a single disparaging word of his fellow professionals, and one with that endearing quality of total humility. He would regale us all, not with his successes, but his failures, and I remember his words, ‘If there are mistakes to be made, I have made them. Listen to me and you will learn a lot!’
Above all, I remember a man forever surrounded with an aura of humour and laughter, and whenever I think of him, I am smiling – just as my father did throughout his many years spent enriched by the company of one of the most colourful and entertaining men he had ever known.
Although my father’s quiet and unassuming funeral was something that he himself would have wished for, we realised that many others, besides his own family, would want the opportunity to pay their final respects. With these thoughts foremost in our minds, the memorial service for James Alfred Wight was planned during the summer of 1995 and, on 20 October, eight months after his death, the service was held in the magnificent setting of York Minster. This occasion was a memorable one, not only for the moving service and the glorious music, but for the humour rather than the sadness that pervaded the Minster that day. It was truly a celebration of a life that had meant so much to so many.