On Christmas Eve last year Alan Greaves said goodbye to his wife, Maureen, and his daughter and grandchildren, and left home for his local church. He would never return. Minutes later he was savagely attacked by two young men, and he died two days later in hospital. Here, Maureen recounts how the Christian beliefs she shared with her husband have sustained her through unimaginable grief
Christmas Eve, 2012. The Greaves family, like millions of other families across Britain, had gathered. Maureen, 64, had made supper for them all, and then her daughter Alison had put her five-year-old twins to bed. Afterwards the adults chatted for a while downstairs: Alan, Maureen’s husband, was the organist at the Anglican parish near their Sheffield home, and he was going there for the midnight s
19 December 2013, The Tablet
‘I had to be forgiving’
Test of faith
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