“I've Learned To Laugh Again”

Losing husband Albert made Edna feel isolated and alone. But a chance meeting with her local Oddfellows group changed her life.

- Elaine McLaren

I suppose I didn’t realise just how much I depended on my husband until he became ill,” recalls Edna Palmer.

Edna, now 67, and her second husband Albert had been married for 16 years when he was diagnosed with secondary liver cancer at the age of just 62.

“It was a very short illness,” Edna remembers. “There was only three months between when he was first diagnosed and the day we lost him, so there was no time to get used to the idea of life without him.”

Edna and Albert had moved from their home in Bootle, Merseyside, to Southport 11 years earlier, and though Edna loved her new house, complete with the garden she’d always dreamed of, she admits she became socially isolated.

“It wasn’t that we’d left all our friends behind – I’d always worked full-time, in a factory, and we socialised with family members rather than neighbours.

“When we moved to Southport, we continued doing the same. We were quite happy keeping ourselves to ourselves.”