Eulogy for Lesley

My beloved wife died in September. This is her story, I hope some reading this will find it encouraging and inspiring.

This I read at Lesley’s funeral at Errol Parish Church on Thursday, 2nd October 2025:

My name is David. It was my blessing and joy to be by Lesley’s side for forty years, as her friend and as her husband. I want to thank you all for being here today to remember and celebrate her life. And it is about that remarkable and well-lived life that I wish to say a few words.

Lesley was born on the 22^nd of April 1966 in New Monkland, Lanarkshire.

Her father, Carrick Watson, was a hard-working local businessman and partner in Watson Brothers, one of Scotland’s best-known motorcycle, car, and van dealerships.

Her mother is Helena Jaqueline Benham.

Lesley grew up in affluent surroundings in Cairnhill in Airdrie and attended Rochsolloch Primary School, which is where I met her, aged five.

She was blond and intensely pretty, with big blue eyes. Her paternal grandfather called her “Bonnie Lesley”. I can recall loving her when I was six, but I didn’t tell anybody, especially Lesley.

We both attended Airdrie Academy. She was a good student but lacked confidence in herself. She enjoyed hockey and carried the scars on her legs to prove it.

After school, she was unclear what she should do with her life; her lack of confidence intensified.

However, having loved her secretly for twelve years, I finally plucked up the courage to ask her out, and we began dating on 13^th October 1984. On our first date, we went to the ABC cinema in Sauchiehall Street to watch Comfort and Joy: a light-hearted comedy about Glasgow’s vicious ice cream wars.

When I proposed just over a year and a half later, she said: “Yes, of course I’ll marry you!” and we both grinned uncontrollably for hours.

We were married in Auchterarder on the 9^th of April 1988, aged 21.

In December that year, six weeks early and weighing only four pounds, our beloved daughter Samantha was born in Perth.

Lesley was, at first, a typical anxious new mum, but motherhood suited her and she soon settled into life with a baby, making friends with other young mums in the town and sharing the joys and trials of parenting with them.

Our second child was lost to a miscarriage. This was one of the great sadnesses of Lesley’s life; we grieved together and became closer.

Our much-longed-for son Daniel was born in February 1992, and, for a little while, we thought our family complete. But we both began to yearn for another child, and our second son, Peter, was born in June 1994.

With three young children, Lesley’s life was full, and she had support from a strong network of other young mothers she met at the school gate or over coffee. There was laughter; there was friendship. The children grew, and Lesley matured into a wise, as well as a caring, and gentle mother.

When I wished to found my own business, she supported me fully, despite the risks involved. We made these decisions together and enjoyed a loving and close marriage.

In 2004, our son Daniel became very ill. He was exhausted, constantly in pain, and unable to attend school. After months of searching for answers, we got the diagnosis that he had ME - Myalgic Encephalomyelitis. This is a long-lasting, debilitating disease with no recognised cure. It can be lifelong.

Lesley’s response to this challenge was magnificent. In addition to caring for Daniel, being a mother to Peter and Samantha, and helping me run our business, she read extensively to research ME. She discovered the confusion and conflict surrounding this disease, and the bureaucratic abuse that parents often received when they acted to protect their desperately sick children from inappropriate and harmful medical intervention. She developed an encyclopaedic knowledge of the disease, treatment options, problems, and pitfalls.

She began to volunteer for The Tymes Trust, a charity for young people with ME, who she had found to be the most accurate and steadfast of the ME charities and thus the one most to be trusted. They, in turn, quickly saw they could trust her knowledge and her judgement. Lesley became their Scottish officer, providing support and advice to families across the country.

Faced with treating a disease with no known cure, Lesley learned that rest and avoiding over-exertion were vital, and that diet offered a path towards natural recovery. So our diet, as a family, started to change. Out went anything artificial or synthetic. In came organic and wholesome produce. Mostly, this was great. Sometimes she could be a little dogmatic, such as the time when she presented us all with a kale and green pepper smoothie.

We hesitated.

Drink up she said.

But it’s green, we said.

Drink it before it settles, she replied.

We did.

After two years of decline, Daniel, who was by then extremely thin, first stabilised and then very slowly began to get better. He did a little more each month until he began playing Colts rugby. His weekly training session was initially all he could manage, with the rest of his time spent lying on a couch, but the improvement continued. Daniel and I started going to the gym. Daniel started playing for the senior rugby sides. Imperceptibly, but steadily, he improved until ME was in his past, not his present.

Lesley continued to fight for other families struggling with ME. She would represent lone mothers in hearings, facing down groups of pompous professionals and, by carefully and accurately describing the illness, the harm their inappropriate prescriptions would do, and their legal obligations to support, not target, families, she turned around numerous cases.

In recognition of her skill, judgement, and commitment, Lesley was invited to become a Trustee of the Tymes Trust in 2015.

ME campaigning also took Lesley into Holyrood, to the cross-party group on ME, where she made many friends and they together fought and won many battles.

When the Scottish Government sought to hand power from parents to state officials called “named persons”, the Tymes Trust opposed them. The Trust had fought and won hundreds of wrongful child protection cases, brought against loving parents whose only “crime” was to protect their terribly ill children from harmful and wrong-headed medical diktats. They could see the harm that would inevitably follow. Thus, it was Lesley’s signature on behalf of the Tymes Trust that was on the legal challenge to parts 4 and 5 of the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014. This was lodged by the Christian Institute and others in the Scottish courts and ultimately went all the way to the UK Supreme Court.

Whilst the legal machine slowly processed the issues, Lesley was part of the No 2 NP campaign that took to the road to inform the parents of Scotland just what sort of tyranny was about to be imposed upon them.

From Dingwall to Dumfries, from Fort William to Peterhead, and in many towns and cities in between, Lesley stood up and forensically demolished the government plans for Parental Capacity to Provide Wellbeing pre-birth assessment forms; the 222 “risk indicators” that might affect a child, the 304 “outcome signifiers” of ‘wellbeing’, and many other absurdities.

She hated public speaking and was always nervous, but she did it anyway. And with accuracy, precision, and gentle humour, she played a big part in the No2NP campaign’s victory in the realm of public opinion and in the battle of ideas with the state over what parenthood, childhood, and parental love are really about.

The No2NP campaign triumphed; the Scottish Government had to pay their legal expenses; The named person legislation was repealed, and, most bitterly resented by the politicians, the No2NP campaign won public campaigner of the year at The Herald’s Scottish Politician of the Year Awards 2016.

All this time, Lesley remained a caring mother and a wonderful wife. As a grandmother, too, her gentleness and thoughtfulness shone. She had a particularly close relationship with her granddaughter, Eliza, whom she understood in a way that perhaps no one else could.

Moreover, through all this turmoil and challenge, Lesley had been walking another path, the path of faith. She had begun with an instinctive faith, but this grew stronger over the years with each trial and each victory. Sometimes, when she was being especially magnificent in a crisis, I would point out her qualities. She would look wryly at me and reply that the qualities were not hers, but rather it was the Lord guiding her and acting through her. Her strengthening faith led her to be baptised as an adult. Following this, she received the strength to tackle some of the hardest problems of her life.

Lesley had almost no memory of her childhood. The reason, she came to understand, was that her mother is a covert narcissist, and she had been subject to narcissistic abuse all of her life. Her lack of memory is a common childhood response to trauma.

On this subject, it is best that I quote a little of her writing on the issue. She wrote:

To grow up not being loved, but continually being told you are loved, breeds not only … vulnerability, but also deep confusion and self-doubt, imprinting a heart-deep belief that you are never good enough.

She later wrote about overcoming these consequences as follows:

Undoing a lifetime of harm, so subtly and covertly inflicted, is a monumental endeavour that I believe is only surmountable through the Grace of God.

Narcissism is deeply evil, its aim is the total destruction of the body and soul, by putting the narcissist in place of God, to love them, not God, with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind.

Only God, through our Lord Jesus Christ can save us from such absolute annihilation in this life and offer hope of the resurrection to come.

When Lesley uncovered this truth concerning her mother and her childhood, she went through a process of grieving. She did this too with grace and patience. It was the second great loss of her life.

In 2019, Lesley was diagnosed with uterine cancer after we sped through the night to Ninewells Hospital as she was losing a lot of blood. She faced this challenge with quiet strength through faith in Jesus Christ. An operation removed the cancer; there was no spread. As she convalesced, her faith developed further and became ever more central to who she was. She was a child of God.

In 2020, our son Daniel, his daughter, and his wife, who was expecting their second child, became destitute – homeless. We took them in; it was a squeeze, but everyone had a bed. Through the covid 19 lockdown months, we sought to help Daniel reset his path in life, but sadly, we could no longer reach him. He was withdrawn and resentful. He would not work; he would barely talk. When he left after ten months in our home, he did not say goodbye and would have nothing more to do with his family. We do not know why.

Thus, Lesley lost her son, for whom she had worked so hard, her daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren from her life. Two further grandchildren have been born, but Daniel did not tell us of their arrival. This was the third and final great loss that Lesley suffered during her life, and this, too, she endured with quiet grace.

In September 2020, our family relocated here to the Carse of Gowrie. Lesley had five wonderful years of peace, spiritual progress, and harmony.

She reached out to her mother to try to construct a new relationship to replace the false one, but received only vicious abuse. She never responded in kind but always held a door open for reconciliation. That door was never used.

In 2024, Lesley received her second cancer diagnosis – unrelated to the first medically- but perhaps trauma was the common cause. She decided to place herself in God’s hands, and we had a wonderful year of hope and of spiritual blessings. During this time, Lesley dealt with and cast out the last of the torment and anguish relating to her childhood, and achieved peace that she had never known before.

She remained healthy and active until just a few weeks before the end of her life. Her passing was peaceful, and she described it as going home.

My beautiful wife will be deeply missed by her family and her friends. She lived a life of grace and of compassion; of love and of triumph. It was my fortunate calling to be her husband.

She had many talents, but what I will miss most is simply her presence.