‘Priest, Mother, Wife, Friend’.
The four simple words chosen by the late Revd Canon Jane Isaac, who died of cancer on June 12, to serve as her epitaph.
Four words with huge depth of meaning and reflecting so many strands of her life.
Her capacity for making, sustaining and enabling friendship was made apparent by the large number who gathered, from near and far, in St John the Baptist Church in Shedfield for her funeral.
Drawn from across the whole span of her life and working career were fellow students from her university days, colleagues in Methodist Church HQ, working mothers in Portsmouth for whom she minded their children, staff from Pompey Football Club, Portsmouth University administration team and from Portsmouth High School for Girls, together with those connected with her many years as a canon’s wife at Portsmouth Cathedral.
Jane’s early years were spent in Nottinghamshire, her father being an optometrist in Mansfield.
Schooldays at Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar were followed by reading history and theology at Leeds, leading on to an MA at University College, London, training in librarian and archivist skills.
A natural progression then to being information officer for the Methodist Church Overseas Division gave her the opportunity to refine further her innate capacity for organising, processing and retrieving data, across a whole spectrum of genres.
Her husband’s move to a canonry at Portsmouth Cathedral in 1990 began for Jane a long span of years connecting with life in the city.
She combined the multi-layered expectations of a canon’s wife with home-making, child-rearing, and providing childminding support for local mums.
When her son Thomas moved on from local schooling to become chorister and subsequently Bishop’s Chorister at Salisbury Cathedral, Jane expanded her engagement with Portsmouth life by working first for Pompey Football Club’s outreach department, then, subsequently, roles in the University’s administration, before taking her data-handling skills to Portsmouth High School for Girls.
After engaging in the demanding and searching process for selection for training, Jane was ordained deacon in Portsmouth Cathedral in 2014, and subsequently priest a year later.
For her curacy, she and David, just retired from his cathedral role, moved to Ryde, where Jane worked in All Saints and St Michael’s, Swanmore. Three years of very satisfying Island life led to a move back over the Solent as Jane took up the joint post of Rector of Wickham and Vicar of Shedfield in 2017.
Giving the eulogy at your mother’s funeral is not a task to be desired. Jane’s son, Thomas, whom she would be proud to see in his RN lieutenant’s uniform, more than rose to the occasion, with a series of childhood vignettes, which, though poignant for him to recall, were engagingly illuminating for his audience, while David, in his turn, shared husbandly memories from across the years.
The lasting impact of Jane’s ministry as a priest in the Church of England, in Ryde, Wickham and Shedfield, is testified to not merely by those attending her funeral, but also by the several hundred cards and letters received, expressing not only condolence, but also thanks and appreciation for what, through her, was received by them of the grace and love of God. Jane, as in all things took great care to choose the content of her funeral, so that it centred on God’s presence and power in her life and ours.
By David Isaac
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