Speech By Anne Shardrake    

With everyone that is here today I am not sure I am the most appropriate person to speak about Nazy as other people have had the pleasure of working with her for much longer. However, I feel honoured that she was part of my working life even though it was for such a short period of time. During the last three months, the department has received numerous messages from Nazy’s colleagues, both past and present, who have worked with her at Great Ormond Street and other hospitals, and, indeed from colleagues who did not even know but her but felt a common bond. 

Amongst my own words I have used some excerpts from some of these messages as I think they encompass how we all feel and I hope that the people concerned will not object.

 Nazy joined Chemical Pathology as a Biomedical Scientist in August 1998 and during this time she became a personal friend of many. Without exception, everybody enjoyed working with her. She was polite and conscientious but also, when appropriate, had a tremendous sense of fun. She was very careful in her approach to work and was determined to do a good job, and if it wasn’t done to her satisfaction, she would continue until it was. She was also the department’s welfare officer and a Mum to us all, who cared about everyone. It didn’t matter who or what you were, if she didn’t think something was right for that person, she would say so. This ranged from complaining about a cleaner having to deal with a blocked toilet (when it should have been the plumber), through to fighting for an extra member of staff in an overstretched area. She was always one of the first to make new staff feel welcome in the department and this included me.  We often have cakes or chocolates in our department and on occasions when I could not make it to coffee she always ensured I didn’t miss out, she would stand at my door with a cake in her hand and that lovely cheeky smile and say, ‘come on Anne, if I don’t look after you who else will’.  

She helped organise and participate in outings with her work colleagues. This included a weekend at Center Parcs, stretch classes, ethnic dinners, and in May, she joined seven other Chemical Pathology staff members in the Race for Life for Cancer Research. She often went to Leather Lane market in her lunch hour and she promised that she would take me one day, but sadly we never made it.

 Nazy’s wise counsel, mature outlook and loving nature have made us all richer for having known her and we will all miss her terribly. 

A former colleague from Great Ormond Street paid tribute by saying: “She was a person dedicated to her family, often talking about her children in conversations. In a move to spend more time with her family she started working four days a week, which in hindsight was a blessing. It’s just a tragedy that that extra time with her family was cruelly cut short by the action of senseless people. It is a sad contradiction that while Nazy’s working life was dedicated to the care of patients at GOS her demise was caused by people who wanted to maximise death and destruction.”   

Frances Taylor, my predecessor here at GOS, said:  “Being so shocked about Nazy makes one realise how unfeeling one is about strangers. So many people are pointlessly killed in this way throughout the world and we hardly let it touch us. Yet when it happens to someone we know, the enormity of the devastation gets through and shakes us to our roots.”

I would like to finish by reading a verse that was sent to me by a colleague who did not know Nazy, but has experienced the tragic loss of someone precious and these words have helped him through. They were said at the Service of Remembrance and Commemoration, St Paul’s Cathedral, 11^th September 2002. I believe Nazy lived her life this way and would have treasured these words.

 Your heart can be empty because you cannot see them,

or you can be full of the love you shared together.

You can remember them and only that they have gone,

or you can treasure their memory and let it live on.

You can cry and close your mind, be empty and turn your back,

or you can do what they want, open your eyes, love and go on.

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