“It was a real privilege. I brought her into the world on my own and I saw her out.”
The words of mother Carol Parker after she held her daughter Hayley’s hand as she died from cancer 10 days ago, aged just 45.
“Brave and generous” is how Hayley Lynskey’s family want the mother-of-six and founder of Bishop’s Stortford and Stansted school clubs Early Birds and Night Owls to be remembered.
Carol told the Indie: “She made the most of life right up until the end – that’s what she wanted. She was brave and so generous.
“She cared about people and she’ll be remembered as somebody who loved to have fun and wanted her business to carry on. That and her six children is her legacy.”
Hayley, who won the Indies Community Awards’ Person of Courage title in 2022, leaves husband and teenage sweetheart Michael and their six children: Callum, 25, Euan, 22, Olivia, 20, William, 11, and twins Poppy and Daisy, 8.
Her funeral will take place at St Joseph’s Catholic Church in Windhill on Saturday (April 20) at 1pm. It will be streamed live via the Church Services TV live feed for those unable to attend.
Family members will carry her coffin into the church and Carol, joined by her partner, Peter, and Hayley and sister Sarah’s father, Chris Newman, will then read the eulogy. Mourners are encouraged to wear navy or colourful clothes.
The burial service will be held at St Mary’s Church in Albury in a plot Hayley had chosen herself overlooking her family’s home, followed by a wake at the village hall.
“We extend an invitation to anybody who knew her,” said Carol. “The church will be packed because she was so well known. We’ll have a memorial book that I really want people to sign so I can keep it for the children – that’s really important to me. I’m keeping all the cards so that the younger ones in particular, who won’t remember this so much, will know how special she was to so many people.”
Hayley started Night Owls after-school club at St Joseph’s Catholic Primary School in Great Hadham Road in 2003 and went on to grow her enterprise so that provision reached Windhill21, Hillmead, All Saints and Northgate primaries in Stortford and Stansted’s Magna Carta Primary Academy.
She was known to so many families throughout the area having also started Little Ladybirds and Appletree Pre-Schools in Stortford.
Her vision was to provide help for parents in a home-from-home environment which she continued to develop, extending into school holiday provision with the Holiday Hedgehogs clubs.
And as mum of Daisy and Poppy, she set up Bishop’s Stortford and District Twins Club when the girls were three months old.
Having grown up in Standon and Albury, attending St Thomas of Canterbury Catholic Primary School in Puckeridge, Hayley followed older sister Sarah, now 48, to St Mary’s Catholic School in Windhill before deciding on a career in childcare.
She studied to be a nursery nurse at Hertford Regional College and became a nanny while her eldest son, Callum, was still a baby.
“She studied childcare having told me she wasn’t going to have any children – and then we used to laugh that she could in fact fill the clubs with her own children!” Carol fondly recalled.
“She met Michael when she was 14 at St Mary’s. He was the love of her life and they had 30 years together, so it was lucky they met so young.
“They had Callum in 1998, were married in 2000 and then in 2003, when Olivia was just nine days old, she set up her first club at St Joseph’s.
“She got straight back into work with breakfast clubs, after-school clubs, Holiday Hedgehogs and pre-schools. Her vision was to have home-from-home childcare.
“She found the curiosity approach later on which used natural resources, no plastics, and created childcare settings with ‘home corners’ with sofas and photos on the wall, or tables laid with real china tea sets so it looked like home.
“It was the thing she loved most, working. If you asked her what her hobby was she would say ‘work’ and she really missed that in the end. Her staff have kept it all going. She was such a good teacher.”
In 2020, Hayley started to develop health problems which resulted in her adrenal gland being removed. By December 2021 she was unwell again and it was soon discovered she had developed neuroendocrine pancreatic cancer, a rare form of the disease which affects the cells that release hormones, and tumours can appear anywhere.
“By this time it had spread to her liver. She had a lot of chemotherapy but it didn’t agree with her and the tumour was still growing,” said Carol.
“She stopped all treatment in February last year when she was told she had a few months to live – but she just kept going and lived for another year.”
The family enjoyed a trip to Disneyland Paris thanks to a fundraiser set up by friends, she threw a big 45th birthday party, enjoyed weekends away with friends and a trip on the Polar Express in December.
She even managed to visit daughter Olivia’s new home after builders organised for her to see it “so she knew where she [Olivia] was going to be”, said Carol.
“By Christmas she couldn’t do anything and was in and out of the hospice twice previously – she always thought she was going home.
“Even when I took her back in on March 22 she was still planning things. We even had an Easter egg hunt on Easter Saturday so she could watch her kids do it.
“She made the most of life right to the end, that’s what she wanted to do. She was so humble about everything, she never said ‘Why me?’
“It was her drive and determination and refusal to give in or moan – as long as she had her six children and Michael, she kept going. She was a fantastic daughter.”