My aunty Rose:
When I thought of my aunty Rose in the past, these thoughts were often accompanied with a feeling that life was a bit unfair to us all in some ways …it happened to Rose as years before to her mother, our Granny Floe, who had to leave the Falkland Islands and part of her family when she moved to live in Punta Arenas with two sisters. After, she married and had her own family….the same family Rose had to leave behind the day she went to live in Argentina and some years later,further away to the Falklands Islands due to her own life’s circumstances.
Distance between these places and Punta Arenas where the rest of the family remained, kept us all from the possibility of sharing time with her, the children, couldn´t share time and games together with their cousins, it didn´t give us the time would have wanted to get to know her a bit more and didn´t give her the chance of beeing a part of what was going on with the family here, spending time with her parents as they aged, and later passed away, sharing time with her brother and sisters, seeing us, all the bunch of nephews and nieces as babies and growing up, she couldn´t attend to any of the weddings the family ceelebrated in Chile either. For many years all we had as a way to be in touch was the boat´s coming every now and then with the long waited letters, photographs , magazines and goodies or the regular post which took months to deliver a letter ….
Although we hadn´t seen each other for so many years, Rose’s letters were always so warm and made us all feel close to her and the family in Stanley….she did a great work to keep us all updated. I am sure my mother (who was her sister and soul mate as she says), my dad, my brother and myself, will always remember how much we enjoyed reading them….she wrote such enjoyable letters where she usually mixed english with spanish which made a strange and unique style of them that kept us all laughing for a long time after we read through each and every line she had written to us.
This lasted many years and now I realise life is always good and somehow made it up to us.
A day came when regular flights from Punta Arenas to the Falkland Islands started and finally she was coming again…we were all so excited !!!! so excited that many of us were there at the airport to see Rose after 30 something years. It was a wonderful day and the following days she stayed here with us we managed to share precious time with her, the grown ups chatting and the small ones altogether playing in the sitting room. My daughter Cristina, (Piti), who was not so small then, can still remember Rose chatting with the adults at Aunty Tishe and George’s place, giving them all a look every now and then, making some funny faces at them just to turn her head again and continue the talk with the big ones, leaving the kids giggling away.
This was the first of several trips back to her birth place which I am sure we will all keep as a tresure in our memories.
I am very gratefull we had the chance to see more of Aunty Rose these last years, she was a remarkable lady who had to go through many rough times and always had the spirit to keep on going with a wonderfull and positive attitude, a valuable life lesson to her children and those who come after them as well as (I am sure) for all those who by means of sharing time with her, had the opportunity to learn from her.
I am missing her emails and the chats over the computer we had. YES !!, this smart Aunty Rose amazed us all by learning how to use a computer to keep in touch with us all more frequently… but I am sure she went when she had to go, God saved her from suffering of long and painful sicknesses and although she is gone, she left us a great treasure : she was human beeing with many imperfections as we all are, but she always had the will of going on with that vivacious characther she had since she was a little girl and that unforgettable sense of humor, gave us all her love, she even found the way to make us, those members of her family who lived far away, know and feel she loved us…she knew how to do it !!!!.
To my cousins and their children:
I am sure we will keep in touch as aunty Rose surelly would have wanted us to.
You were given a huge blessing by having Rose as a mother and a granny, so despite the sorrow and pain her departure causes, as well as the emptiness you are surelly feeling, I warmly encourage you all to life your lives to the full as she would have wished for you, keeping the good and dropping up all that’s not worth keeping.
We will remain here for you always,
With my love,
Doreen Punta Arenas, 10th July, 2008
From Doreen Morrison on 11/07/2008