Vale Jeane Freeman

The funeral of Jeane Freeman OBE took place in Scotland on Saturday. Among decades of activism, advocacy, engagement, leadership and public service, Jeane was Scotland's Minister for Health during the COVID crisis.

Jeane and I met almost 50 years ago. We got to know and like one another through our work in the Broad Left leadership groups of the National Union of Students in Glasgow, Scotland and latterly the UK. We became friends, allies, colleagues and comrades. We married in 1980.

Typically for us, we cut short our honeymoon the day the Tory Government announced closure plans for some of Scotland's colleges of education. There were ten back then.

Buckle up. Tally ho!

It was that sort of youthful intensity which drove us. It always has. And although our lives diverged our friendship was lifelong.

Change the world, we hoped. Jeane did.

On the day I was told of Jeane's brief illness I wrote a poem. It's what I sometimes do in moments of personal need. Jeane and I were in daily touch thereafter. That was my good fortune in what proved to be her final days.

Jeane and her partner Susan liked my poem. Jeane decided she would have it read at her funeral (by our friend Maggie). And that, I recognise, is Jeane to a T. Always organising. Always shaping events. Always thinking of others.

In our hearts forever.

This is my poem for Jeane.

It is enough

to know we passed this way

spent time together

loved and laughed

and sometimes cried

and thought we’d change

the world

and maybe did

in tiny, tiny ways

while it changed us

which is the deal.

philosophers have only

interpreted the world

in many ways.

the point

however

is to change it

so wrote the old dead German

who was not wrong

but like us all

not wholly right

we never are

we never were

we never could be

which also is the deal.

and on a fireplace mantel

of a top-floor flat in Glasgow

on a small white

wall tile

are words by McIntosh

(Charles Rennie McIntosh

for avoidance of all

doubt)

  There is hope in honest error.

none

in the icy perfections

of the mere stylist.

now

as you know

I am not a man

of God

but someone said

that Jesus said

these three remain:

faith, hope, and love

and the greatest of these

is love.

so, who am I

to argue?

imagine

if you will

a cosmic Venn

it’s  

there

you’ll find us.

-----

Jeane's obituary can be read in The Guardian

Condolence speeches made in the Scottish Parliament on Wednesday, 25 February can be viewed here.