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Unsung Heroines Miss Winefride Pink
Kristina Cooper remembers Winefride Pink, who helped start the Catholic Charismatic Renewal Centre in the late 1970's together with her great friend, Sr Mary Peter Scanlan, and who died last year aged 89 years old after a life spent serving the Lord
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Winefride was already over 70 when I joined the staff of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal office, which was then in the King's Road. She had been working there ever since she retired from teaching and was very happy in her second career, helping her great friend Sr Mary Peter Scanlan, run the information office. Her main task was sending out books and tapes and cooking the lunch. In those days we always had a sit down meal, of baked potatoes or tinned spaghetti, all cooked on a tiny Baby Belling. It must have been hard for both of them to have a young thing invade their space who breezed in, using the phone, for hours and before midday! But if they were irritated they never showed it and always made me feel very precious and loved. Both of them were wonderful examples to me of the truism that if you love God, your life continues to be fruitful right to the end.
It was her spirit of joyful service that I always admired. She didn't mind what she did to help. Even in her late 80's in the nursing home, with her health failing, she was always helping others - whether it was fellow residents, who had problems with the lifts, or helping visiting Spanish priests with their English conversation. I was also impressed the way she accepted so gracefully her diminishing powers without bitterness or anger and simply let go when the time came. In her early 80's she decided that maybe it was time to cut down her hours at the centre and only came in a few hours a week. Then one day she told me that she had decided to sell her flat and move into a nursing home. "I just can't manage the shopping and cooking any more," she told me "and I've been to see a place and it's perfect. It's got a chapel and I'll have my own room and the Spanish sisters who run it are very nice." And so she moved in to St Teresa's Home for Ladies. When I visited her I was struck again by her cheefulness. She couldn't speak highly enough of the place and the blessings of having her laundry done and the nice food, although I'm sure there were little curtailments on her freedom that must have been difficult at times, like the rule of not being able to make your own cups of tea when you wanted, but she only talked about things in positive terms. She loved the chapel and was such a regular that she had her own reserved place with the nuns at evening prayer. Her biggest sorrow was following an operation on her mouth, she couldn't put her false teeth back, which made eating unsightly and meant she could no longer read at Mass. "I suppose I was a bit proud of my reading voice," she confessed. I'm sure she had a little weep about this but it never made her bitter. She just accepted it with the same resilience she did all the other down turns in her life. Winefride will always be one of my heroines, because she showed me that I needn't be afraid of old age, of ill health, of death; that serving God is not about tasks that are done but the love with which you do it, for when everything is taken away, and even if people forget you, love remains, because it is part of who you are. Hers was an ordinary life but lived extraordinarily well, like so many unsung saints, known only to God and the few people who had the privilege of knowing them. I'm sorry that I never got to say goodbye, but I know she would have forgiven me, because she was like that. Pray for me, Winefride, and all of us that we will keep as faithful in our lives as you were to the Lord and his work and that we will end as graciously and humbly as you did. 1 CORINTHIANS 13.1-13
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I
hadn't seen her for a long time. It happens so often when people get
old and they are not in your immediate orbit. You keep meaning to
write, to phone to visit and then something that seems more pressing
pushes them from your mind and you forget. It was a shock thus, when
just before Christmas I rang the nursing home where Winefride lived
to hear the words, "I'm afraid Miss Pink passed away earlier
this year." Had it been that long since I'd been in touch? I
felt shame and guilt. Winefride who had always been so special to
me, had slipped home to heaven without me having had a chance to say
goodbye or show my appreciation for her.
It
seemed to me that Winefride had always enjoyed her life. She had never
married but she was someone who was full of love for everyone she
met. She would regale me with stories when she was a landgirl in the
war or going camping with the cubs. One of the jobs she particularly
loved at the charismatic office was helping with the administration
of the annual priests' retreat. Sometimes I would hear Winefride and
Sr Mary Peter discussing their concern about a particular priest and
why he hadn't registered that year, and whether they should give him
a little reminder or not. Whatever their age, the priests were "their
boys". Another of the highlights of her year, was preparing the
office Christmas meal. As the staff grew it got more and more difficult
to fit round her small kitchen table, but she felt it was her sacred
task to make sure we all got a proper Christmas dinner with all the
trimmings.
