Eulogy for Andrew

Jonathon Pearce

Hello everyone,

It is a great honour that Rosaleen, Laura and Aisling asked me to talk about Andrew today, but the fact that there are very few people here who knew Andrew for longer than I have (Hello Andrew’s Auntie Fran) might have pushed my name to the top of the list!

Before I spend a few minutes giving some highlights – Andrew’s life may have been cut short, but he certainly lived his 64 years to the full, Rosaleen and the girls have asked me to thank you all for coming today, and to thank you for the support you gave to Andrew and the family since he was diagnosed with MND in April 2024. Special mentions to the staff at theNational Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, who made every visit feel more like a social event than a hospital appointment – Prof Malaspina, Damaris, Michaela, Justyna, Sinead and Nicole, the staff at Phyllis Tuckwell Hospice, Lyn, Sarah, Sam, Milla, Dr Sarah, Dr Jack and Chaplain Gerard who brought a smile to Andrew’s face every time they visited. The District Nurse team and Andrew’s wonderful PA’s Agnes, Martha and Roseline whose assistance to Andrew and Rosaleen over the final few months of Andrew’s life was wonderful. 

Tom and Bertie who not only gave their love and support to Laura and Aisling, but who also without hesitation lifted and carried, provided tech support to help Andrew use his AI voice until the very end and produced wonderful family meals.

Andrew’s brother Peter for keeping Andrew’s love of Spurs alive (even if that meant the agony of watching Spurs lose…. and lose again) not to mention Peter’s shaving skills.

Bernadette, Rosaleen’s sister, who basically abandoned her own life for six months moved in with Andrew and Rosaleen, caring for both Andrew and Rosaleen,  producing homemade cake for every visitor and enlisting the support of brothers Michael and Martin, when necessary, who like Peter had to refine their shaving skills!

Gareth the Wrecks and Ian who between them kept a constant stream of Andrew’s friends visiting, bringing endless joy music and laughter into Old Park.

Thanks to Fr Alexander for coming out to Farnham to visit, and to everyone who visited, sent messages, offered solace to Andrew for Spurs’ dismal season and generally brought a sense of normality to their lives.

Thank you to Rosaleen’s colleagues at Towerhouse who gave her the space to put Andrew first over the last 2 years.

Thank you to everyone who has contributed to the memorial book (there is still time to read and add to it). It will be treasured by Rosaleen and the girls.

Andrew was the first son of Jack and Christine, joined just over three years later by his brother Peter. Family was everything to Andrew. From the time Andrew got his first mobile phone he would speak to his father every day until his death in 2010. In the years before her death in early 2024 Christine would spend the winter months living with Andrew and Rosaleen in Old Park.

Andrew and I were on the same creche roll over 60 years ago, but it was in our early teens that we became pals – we went through teenager hood together – climbing trees, Boys Brigade and youth club and football on Saturdays then first girlfriends and first beers and hangovers. Gigs and holidays and just endless mucking about.  Peter as a younger brotherfollowing along, when he could, soaking up the fun along the way and unforgettably being introduced to Spurs as a teenager. They were hooked. If their Mum and Dad worried (they must have),Peter says that they never showed it. Happy days, which only ended when Andrew could no longer make it the Spurs ground just late last year.

I was best man at Andrew and Rosaleen’s wedding and a few years later the arrival of Laura and Ais and of course Siobhan Caitlin and Patrick

Andrew loved the company of children and rejoiced in being a dad wrapped in family and drawing in so many friends old and new. I know I was not the only one that Andrew gave a home to. Somehow Andrew made it feel like I was doing a service to them.

He was there to help in a heartbeat with VSO, NSPCC, Street League, Hammersmith Academy to give just a few examples.

Andrew was so good at loads of stuff but most of all brilliant at living and getting the last drop of juice from the day. Over the years it feels like we went through all the colours dark and bright, and when I was ill, he was there, sure and steadfast. His own diagnosis would have made most despair but the response from both him and Rosaleen was pragmatic, stoic and graceful. It couldn’t be a fight because he knew the odds were so stacked against him and that makes the bravery and loving care they shared so extraordinary. Andrew’s was a life so well lived, and his friendship, man and boy, has been one of the greatest joys of my life and for that I thank him a thousand times with love.

Ian Curtis

I first met Andrew at Hewlett-Packard in 1983 – we were both fresh out of University in our first jobs and we bonded over our pride as fellow Men of Kent and over our common interests - especially football and Germany and the German language. I was taken with his confidence, his charisma, his intelligence and his sense of fun. Our shared rented house in Wokingham was a riot – we were like students but with money – how we weren’t thrown out of that house I will never know.

We hatched a plan to go to Brazil, where we thought the football gods lived. Our timing wasn’t great to be honest. I had just met Sheila, my future wife, and Andrew and Rose were due to move house. But we went anyway - and I think neither of us imagined that that trip would create shared experiences and memories that would last a lifetime. I think we may since have bored poor Rose and Sheila about our trip once or twice too often. 

I stayed on at Hewlett-Packard far longer than Andrew who decided to branch out to bigger and better things. Work was a big part of Andrew’s life. He left in 1990 to found his own business process testing company - X-Team. He sold the company to Compaq in the late 1990s, and set up a Customer Intimacy-based consultancy, Closer Partners and then in 2006 he acquired a Life and Pensions Solutions company, Airas Intersoft with his friend Gareth, one of the other 1983 HP newbies, which traded as AI-London until they sold it in 2022. Andrew is remembered by his work colleagues as a great collaborator and supporter of young talent with a truly optimistic, ‘can do’ attitude which often left them all speechless –which was one thing Andrew could never be accused of!

Despite Andrew leaving HP 35 years ago we always stayed close - he was brilliant at keepingin touch with people. I have so many fond memories of lunches and dinners and nights out –he took me to football at Spurs and I would take him to West Ham. Hard to say who got the best deal out of that arrangement but we always had fun. Andrew was also possibly the best male of the species I ever met at openly expressing his feelings (and I don’t mean just on football) - he was always at his best when times were tough and the chips were down.

Andrew’s strength and bravery since his diagnosis have been a true inspiration to many of us here today. I remember my first conversation with him after his diagnosis. He was stoic and emphatic that he had no bucket list of things he still wanted to do. He was so happy with the family he had, the friends he had made, all the things he had done, the places he had seen and the accomplishments he could point to. I know that sense of contentment with his life gives great comfort to Rosaleen and the girls.

I’ll finish with something Gareth wrote on Andrew’s memorial page (hopefully not copyrighted!). “Among Andrew’s many gifts, the golden thread running through Andrew’s life was his genius with people. To Andrew, a room full of strangers was just a room full of friends he hadn’t met yet”. It is heartwarming to see the Church full of people today who were once strangers to Andrew and became lifelong friends”.

Jonathon Pearce – on behalf of Andrew’s family

Andrew’s family wanted to add:

It’s impossible to boil down what our family life has been like all the time we had Dad here with us. It’s been amazingly fun, adventure-filled, there were holidays, school concerts, gigs, parties, skiing, tennis swimming and lots of table tennis, weddings and funerals. Advice was given, not always taken, hours were spent at White Hart Lane, on flights, in restaurants, just hanging out at home in the garden and lots of dog walks. Years and years of love-filled days are hard to capture in the couple of minutes we have now.

But maybe we don’t need to tell you what our family life was like, cos it seems like you all already know, the memorial book shows the threads of Dad’s personality that brought us all here today. And they’re exactly what we felt at home: generosity, curiosity and a lust for life. We all felt it, both those he knew a little and a lot.

As a family we witnessed his condition progress, but we also saw these themes stripped back to their essence – love.

Towards the very end of his life Dad started texting us every night in the family WhatsApp group to say goodnight, love you loads. When he used his eye-gaze, you’d hear him saying to Mum, “I love you” when they got a moment alone. In the last days of Dad’s life an “I love you Dad” would be answered with a blink, acknowledgement, response, pure love.

And that was it, he loved us loads, he loved you all loads and he loved life loads.

 And that love isn’t leaving with him, it won’t be forgotten, it will be lived.