A Time To Mourn

This week I was meaning to write a post about a blog award that I received recently. But sometimes certain events happen in life which make me stop and think. I have tended not to get too personal in my posts, figuring that my life is not always that interesting. But I think that sharing about certain events, both happy and sad, help to create a bond with my readers, a bond shared by the simple fact that we are humans. So today I wanted to share with you about the loss of my husband’s nanna (grandmother) who died 3 days ago aged 91. It was a peaceful death, totally unexpected, a passage from this life to the next. It is not easy to say goodbye, even to someone who lived a long life. For those left behind, there will be a period of sadness, a time of mourning. But memories of nanna will live on with us forever. In her five surviving daughters, 11 grandchildren and 5 great-grandchildren. In her legendary support of Liverpool Football Club. In the colourful blankets she so lovingly knitted for all of us… So although these next few days will be tinged with sadness, we hope to come together to celebrate a life rather than mourn a death. And as I sit here and write I realize just how precious this one life that we have is and how much we should cherish every minute. I need to be the first to learn to slow down, to stop, look around me and breathe in deeply. For sometimes I get too caught up in chores and cleaning, work and duties and I don’t appreciate the little things in life: the people around me who mean so much to me, precious moments that won’t last forever, my little boy’s mischievous laughter, the smell of coffee, the flight of a butterfly, the drone of a bee …

So, for now, it’s time to say goodbye to nanna Antonia, or as she was better known, Tonina... It’s time to remember a life that was not easy, but a life lived with dignity and a simple undying faith; a life lived without so many of the gadgets that make our chores easier but a life rich in the love of family and friends. Not many are left of that generation that was born at the end of the Great War, who reached their prime and brought up their children during the Second World War and saw the world change in front of their eyes. Not many are left to remember a way of life that we can only imagine. While the hearts of those left behind are heavy with sorrow, we find peace in the thought that her earthly trials are over and she is at home, in a place where there will be no more sadness and no more tears.

Antonia Formosa (nee Mizzi)

09 May 1918 - 09 June 2009

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted...

He has made everything beautiful in its time. (Ecclesiastes 3: 1-2, 11)