The following was written as a funeral address for Elia, my wife’s mother when she died last year. I would like to remember this remarkable woman on the first anniversary of her death by publishing that address in this post.
(Elia in Saint James’ Park London)
When Elia, celebrated her ninety-eighth birthday on June 10th this year, with her daughter Alexandra and me, her son-in-law at home we imagined that there would be an even more beautiful party in two years’ time when Elia would have been one hundred years old.
Sadly this was not to be. However, we should instead be grateful that Elia has led a life full of so many accomplishments and events and lived in good health until near the end. Elia’s eyesight, for example, was near perfect – she could see the number of the bus coming before I ever could – and never needed to wear glasses.
On Tuesday afternoon, 25th June, the lady who gave birth to Alexandra, my wife for over forty-two years now, finally flew to heaven with her guardian angel, to become one with the eternal love of her Creator.
Born in Italy’s Venice region in 1921, less than three years after World War one ended, Elia grew up in a farming community during difficult times. Among her activities were looking after silk worms, feeding them with mulberry leaves, and growing tobacco.
In 1936 Elia became an employee of Colussi, the biscuit manufacturers. It was in that same year that a devastating earthquake hit her area of north Italy, an experience which she described to me in its terrifying details.
Regrettably, another disaster, this time man-made, hit shortly afterwards when World War two broke out. Elia confessed to me that she hoped we would never know the hunger and poverty that her community experienced during those dreadful times.
Elia also worked in Sardinia for her uncle at a hotel in Iglesias –a place Sandra and I visited during our own trip to that beautiful island.
Elia inherited her father’s spirit of adventure: he had travelled to America and helped build New York’s Brooklyn Bridge. Elia’s own adventurous spirit took her to a post-war UK with her cousins and where she worked as a Nanny. They lived in a cottage near the Duke of Norfolk’s castle at Arundel. It was in these idyllic country surroundings that Elia met Dino. It was love at first sight – a love so strong that again, this Easter, Elia visited Dino’s last resting place near his birthplace of Florence.
Alexandra was born from that love in 1948 and, with wondrous coincidence, when we married, on the 7th day of the 7th month of 1977 at Caxton Hall, it was the same registrar who had married Sandra’s parents who married us!
In London the Italian Institute had been set up to restore amicable relations between formerly war-torn countries and to spread love of Italy, its language and its culture in the UK.
Both very industrious persons, Elia and Dino worked as an indefatigable team at the Italian Institute. Dino became Secretary-General and Elia not only was telephonist and receptionist but also set up a canteen where she showed great initiative in cooking delicious pasta dishes and cakes for English people at a time when the delights of Italian cuisine were still very little known in the UK.
Elia was always pleased to show her Italian friends and relatives around London and its surroundings and her hospitality was legendary. She loved to travel and even in May this year, aged 97, flew to Italy. Elia passionately loved her garden which she kept as elegant as a living room. She did wonderful flower arrangements at the Italian Institute and her garden display there won a prize from Westminster City Council.
Through her work Elia met many distinguished persons and with all of them felt perfectly at ease and made them feel at ease too. She could always hold her own in conversation with people from all walks of life.
Elia loved animals and for many years her and Dino’s constant companion was the whippet Lord Rupert and Cheeky the tortoiseshell cat.
Elia was an avid reader; she knew all the novels of Jane Austen in Italian and English and had a shelf-full of her favourite author, Catherine Cookson, whose novels where heroines meet difficult situations must have had considerable resonance with Elia’s own experiences.
Elia also loved music. She enjoyed singing to herself and her favourite piece was the chorus from Verdi’s ‘Nabucco’ which you heard at the beginning of this celebration.
| Elia was a perfectionist in everything she did. Brilliant in sewing, making curtains, quilts she was a veritable make-do-and-mend person whose example is once more followed in this consumer society.
Elia’s life is an example, to all those lucky people who have known her, of a pioneering woman of her time: a modern lady in another age. She is a memory that will always remain fresh, like her complexion that always seemed filled with youthful sunshine. We feel proud to have helped Elia enjoy her life till the end and we celebrate her sudden departure into a new world safe from harm and surrounded by her loved ones with joy and sadness in equal measure. Like her daughter, my wife Alexandra, I shall miss you Elia. It’s not only going to be a goodbye but also an au revoir till we meet again. May you rest in Heavenly Bliss and Peace and enjoy a well-deserved repose. With Alexandra I love you Elia and always will. |
(Near Westminster Bridge London)