Pamela Joan Kedge

To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die.

Obituary

Pamela was an exceptional woman. She was born post-war, in the Castel Hospital, to a mother who had survived occupation from the invading forces during the Second World War and a father who came over with the liberating forces of the Medical Corps in the British Army. The Shepherd family had decided to stay on Guernsey during the Occupation and the family returned to the South Esplanade, after the German soldiers had left their houses at the end of the war. Grandparents Kathleen and Bill Shepherd ran a guesthouse. 

Pam grew up in a household of music, with the big band sound of the 40s and 50s, with Bill Shepherd playing in jazz bands and in the Guernsey Militia Band on clarinet, saxophone or big bass drum (which still remains in Castle Cornet to this day). Pamela learned to play the piano at a young age, and has had a long passion for music all her life. Her favourite musicians of course starting with The Beatles which she saw in Guernsey when they came to perform at Candie Gardens. Pam was also called Zippy by Barbara and Jack because of the song 'Zippy-de-doo-da from Song of the South by Disney'.

She sang with the Guernsey Glees, and she contributed on the team supporting local music and visiting musicians at St James'.

Pam joined the Soroptimist's International Guernsey where she made lifelong friends, supporting the community with women's issues. 

She grew up along the South Esplanade in St Peter Port, going to school at Notre Dame through the lanes behind town. She then went to the Girls' Grammar School. After getting her A levels, she went to Bristol University and qualified as a dental surgeon. She moved back to Guernsey and practised in Cornet Street. In 1974 she moved to Birmingham and set up her practice with Paul alongside Derek Allaway's practice, then they set up their own practice in Little Green Lanes. Her career spanned from 1970 to late 2010s, working in Guernsey, Birmingham and back to Guernsey again. Taking over from Mr Milner in the Grange, she built up her practice. She also worked for the school dental clinic, as well as being the prison dentist for a while. She was supported by her dental nurses Mitzi, Maria, Sharon and Tracey. She moved to the Rohais Medical Practice for a while, with Barbara on the reception, then the Rohais Dental Practice, Badminton Halls. Her career spanned nearly 50 years.

Pam had many interests: French, Spanish, sewing, knitting and patchwork, jewellery making, painting and music and most of all her animals !  Pam and Richard were able to spend many holidays in Brittany in their Breton house in Corseul making friends in France as well. 

After retiring Pam and Richard moved to Horton, Ilminster in Somerset, surrounding by beautiful countryside in a most picturesque area. 

Birches by Robert Frost

When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.
But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay
As ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust—
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows—
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father's trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It’s when I’m weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig’s having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:
I don’t know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

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