Jacky’s story

‘My son Jon was 16 and he had terrible headaches and the doctors didn’t think it was anything, but in 2002 he was diagnosed with a brain tumour. He had an emergency operation and then a year of radiotherapy and chemotherapy.

‘Psalm 23 comes into it when he was going downhill in 2012. He wasn’t well enough to go to church any more. He used a wheelchair. He had a hut in the garden and we would have our own little acts of worship in there.

‘That was what we were doing and that was when he came across the York Minster Choir singing The Lord’s my shepherd. He loved it. When he went into the hospice, he listened to it quite a lot and I read it to him too. 

‘On his last day of consciousness, when he was 26, one of the vicars came to visit and Jon told him that it was his favourite reading and would he read it. There was a room in the hospice which had a window with a stream and green fields in it like Psalm 23. The vicar read it and Jon said, “That was wonderful.” After that he went to sleep.’