THE usually quiet rural roads of Clabby were lined with people on Sunday as friends of the much-loved Tanya Armstrong paid their final respects to the “bubbly and outgoing” 51-year-old as she was laid to rest.

“It was very fitting, because she was well-liked and well-known,” said Tanya’s beloved husband, Nicky Armstrong, describing his late wife as a “very bubbly and outgoing person”.

“No matter where we went, there was always somebody that she knew,” he added.

After a two-year battle with pancreatic cancer, Tanya passed away peacefully, surrounded by her loved ones on Thursday, August 12.

Together 29 years, Nicky was by Tanya’s side to the very end.

“As a wife, she was very good, I can’t say anything wrong about her. She kept me on the straight and narrow; she looked after me,” he told this newspaper.

Nicky and Tanya first met in their early twenties, brought together by friends who set them up on a blind date.

“A friend knew both of us and we were told the whole gang was going to such and such a place that night. It ended up that it was only me and Tanya landed there!

“So that’s how it started,” said Nicky with a laugh.

Although originally from Trillick, Nicky was living in Coleraine when he starting going out with Tanya, who was a “Clabby girl”.

“I was in Coleraine, but I regularly came back up this part of the country. I met Tanya and eventually came back here,” said Nicky, noting how he used to travel down to see her multiple times a week.

As a couple, they loved going on holidays together.

“We did a couple of cruises and went to Australia a couple of times. Times like that there, when we were together, they’re lovely memories,” Nicky reminisced.

Together, Tanya and Nicky had one son, Dale.

‘A very good mother’

“She was a very good mother to him. He wanted for nothing,” said Nicky.

Up until she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer two years ago, Tanya had been working in BT for 16 years as a trainer.

“She had a gang of girls there who stuck by each other through thick and thin. She would have went out with them regularly and they met up as much as they could,” said Nicky, commenting on how close Tanya was with her colleagues.

Throughout her life, Tanya’s biggest passion was playing bowls. “She was bowling mad,” laughed Nicky.

“She’d have gone from here to Cork to play bowls,” he added, explaining that Tanya played for her local club in Clabby and also was part of the Western Zone Ladies Team.

“She could have been bowling two or three nights of the week.

“That was all right, as I had my own interests anyway. It was a good marriage – we didn’t see each other,” he said with a laugh.

Joking aside, he added: “But we’d come together at night and talk. Behind the bedroom door, we’d have wee chats about what we’d done that night or that day.”

Tanya had a strong Christian faith and was very involved in her church of St. Margaret’s in Clabby.

She loved doing the flower arranging in the church for special occasions, and only last year she took up the role of church secretary.

“Come Harvest time in Clabby church, Tanya would take off a week of her holidays, and she dedicated that to decorating the church,” said Nicky.

Tanya took ill around Easter, 2019, and it was discovered not long after that she had a tumour in her pancreas.

“She went for an operation and had almost all of her pancreas removed. That was a big operation, and she was very sick after that.

“When she got strong enough, she had 12 sessions of chemo, and then she had to go back and have another 12 sessions.

“That took a lot out of her,” said Nicky, who went on to comment that Tanya was “very positive” throughout her illness.

“If anybody asked Tanya how she was, she would say, ‘I’m fine’. Even up to the very last, she was very positive about everything.”

In late 2020, the community in Fermanagh and further afield helped raise £25,000 for Tanya to undergo dendritic cell therapy – a form of experimental cancer treatment – from Germany.

The treatment meant that Tanya didn’t have to undergo chemotherapy for a short while.

About a month ago, Tanya began to feel more unwell, and she went downhill from then. Sadly, her cancer eventually overcame her.

“She passed away with us all around her at home. She slipped away peacefully,” said a heartbroken Nicky.

Tanya’s funeral took place at St. Margaret’s Church, Clabby on Sunday, August 15 and was arranged by Ian McCutcheon Funeral Directors.

Donations in lieu of flowers will go to Pancreatic Cancer, and cheques should be made payable to Mr. Ian McCutcheon & Son, Funeral Directors, Clabby, Fivemiletown.

Nicky and the rest of Tanya’s family were grateful for the many people who attended her funeral and showed them support.

“Members of various bowling clubs, including her own, did a guard of honour for her, which was very nice,” said Nicky.

Beloved wife of Nicky, dearly loved mother of Dale (Courtney), devoted grandmother of Georgia, dear sister of Lavinia and family, and much-loved daughter of Gordon and Lily, Tanya is greatly missed by her friends, family and wider family circle.