She spread kindness to everyone

Susan McGrath, who died on September 19, made a difference to many people’s lives in Rye, Kent and Sussex. Husband Chris has been sharing some snippets from her eventful life.

Susan was born in Southampton on September 25 1948, just in time for the NHS. The small family lived for a short period with her grandparents, then moved to Eastbourne, living firstly in requisitioned rooms behind the Grand Hotel, then in a council flat in Langney.

She was an avid reader and did well at her junior school, where she was the only girl to go on the high school. There, again, she excelled and the staff were preparing her for Oxbridge. But Susan had a contrary streak and chose instead Eastbourne Art School at the age of 16, spending all her spare time at the Devonshire Park Theatre, her other love. She preferred to be backstage, particularly designing lighting effects, rising to ASM, but occasionally appeared in minor roles on stage.

Every summer she would travel to Stratford-on-Avon, sitting on the floor of the theatre for performances of Hamlet, etc. and hanging around the stage door after the show. She met the acting greats; Judi Dench encouraged her to make a career in the theatre and David Warner bought her drinks at the ‘Dirty Duck’ (Black Swan pub) opposite.

She was offered an internship with the Royal Shakespeare Company but fate intervened, when in 1966 she met Chris, a student at Canterbury School of Architecture.

Two years later, when Chris graduated, they married and moved to Dublin, for Chris’s job with Wates. Susan soon got fed up with doing nothing and got jobs, firstly with a women’s magazine and then as a dental nurse.

Their daughter Ro was born in 1969, and Becket in 1971.

Susan joined a women’s liberation group in Dublin and helped organise a stunt with Mary Kenny and others, catching a train to Belfast, purchasing condoms, (illegal in the Republic), and scattering them from the train window!

By this time Susan’s mum had terminal MND and there was a bank strike in Ireland, so the family moved back to Sussex, living on an organic farm at Hankham, while Chris worked for the Eastbourne borough architect. In 1977 the family moved to a thatched cottage in Udimore, where 2 years later, the couple’s third child, Euan, was born and where they stayed for 36 eventful years, fully entering into village life. Susan decided that her teachers were correct, so she obtained English A level and applied to Sussex University, as a mature 23 year old, for a place studying her favourite subjects, English and history. She was fortunate that her interview was with Asa Briggs, at that time vice-chancellor. After graduating with a BA, she went on to gain a masters in women’s literature. The next step was to become a lecturer at Sussex teaching women’s studies.

Susan followed university with a wide variety of jobs in education and research. Projects included working on the Rye Rural Development Area, Replan, Wider Opportunities for Women and teaching English literature to WEA groups, and at Hastings College, where she set up and led the careers advice office. She also prepared needs analysis reports for dozens of schools and colleges throughout Sussex and Kent and helped run adult education in East Sussex and the new city of Brighton and Hove. She also wrote a report on women in the local fishing industry!

She then trained as a counsellor and helped many, including local men made redundant, bereaved relatives at St Michael’s Hospice and farmers at risk of self harm.

By 2011, it was obvious she had problems with her eyesight and she had to give up driving. To her disappointment she had to refuse an offer to help troubled teenagers at Thomas Peacocke School, because she couldn’t take notes.

But in 2012 she and Chris were fortunate to be accepted as diggers on the Neolithic Ness of Brodgar excavation in Orkney, where her condition limited her completing paperwork, but not the trowelling she loved so much.

After two years of fruitless investigation at the Conquest Hospital ophthalmology department, she was finally diagnosed with PCA, posterior cortical atrophy, a rare dementia which gradually destroys eyesight and the ability to navigate through spaces, because the brain can’t process information from the eyes.

Being Susan, she soon signed up for several research projects at the Dementia Research Centre, part of UCL, at Queen Square, London, where the professors and doctors took over as her medical consultants. Research included large illuminated spinning wheels, walking through a maze whilst being filmed, and having multiple MRI scans and a lumbar puncture. Susan never complained about these intrusive procedures. During this period Susan also enjoyed horse riding for the disabled, singing with the Music Well choir and sailing with Sailability.

She and Chris were one of the first couples to sign up to the Time for Dementia programme organised by the Brighton and Sussex School of Medicine and continued this for ten years. The scheme matches pairs of student doctors with families experiencing dementia. For Susan it was a win / win situation – she had intelligent young people to talk to in her home, and the students learned something of what living with dementia was like for families.

Susan’s condition gradually worsened over the twelve years of PCA, accelerating this year until she had to have a hospital bed installed at home to make it easier for carers from Bluebird to nurse her. Her GP, paramedics and nurses all did their jobs with patience and empathy until the final two weeks of rapid deterioration ended with her death on the September 19 with Chris at her side, six days before her 76th birthday.

Susan was a remarkable person who spread kindness to everyone she met.

Image Credits: Chris McGrath .