My maternal grandmother Lucia Varea de Trillo was born in 1910 on the 25th of November, one of seven children and a fraternal twin to a brother. The only other girl died in infancy.
Lucia was a dynamic woman. Imprisoned during the Spanish Franco Regime and sentenced to death via firing squad for her part in the protection and escape of anti Franco revolutionaries, almost killed by fire when her nightgown caught alight as a teenager, and a triumphant survivor of spousal infidelity, WW2 as a single parent, and multiple migration. She had four children, three boys (including twins) and a girl, my mother.
Lucia was the father I didn't have. She taught me everything I know from a practical, domestic, and pragmatic viewpoint. She also shared some enduring pearls of wisdom I took into my own atrocious life which safeguarded me somewhat. She also "saved" me from my mother's wrath many a time although mother told me she was in fact the person who would "dob me in" for bad behaviour then come rescue me from her petty cruelties and corporal punishments - therefore implying Lucia suffered Munchausen's by Proxy.
This admission caused me to decide not to attend my grandmother's funeral when she passed seventeen years ago. I was so hurt and betrayed that the only person I cared for and felt safe with would hurt and betray me like this.
For the better part of these seventeen years I grieved Lucia's alleged betrayal. She was my only parent and I trusted her.
But then I had a dream. In this dream Lucia asked for my forgiveness. I denied it to her remaining steadfast. She kept appearing in my dreams until one day I decided I would let her go through forgiveness. In the end I don't even truly believe my mother anyway as Gloria was an envious personality type who certainly resented me in almost every way.
Whether Lucia was Munchausen's by Proxy or not, she was the only role model I had growing up in Italy, and everything I knew up until I divorced aged 38, I learnt from her. I still catch myself paraphrasing my Sagittarian grandmother and using her tried and true practical housekeeping methods.
After I forgave Lucia, she no longer came to me in my dreams. I had set her free.
Lucia was never Abuela, she forbade me to call her this adding she did not call me Granddaughter
Lucia died aged ninety-five from complications that had nothing to do with her smoking cigarettes from the age of ten, or drinking wine from the age of twelve.
In my autobiography Lucia is credited as Letitia.
My Uncle Miro was born Edelmiro Luis Trillo in 1938 on the 30th of November.
Edelmiro had a difficult time growing up during WW2 and in an unstable family. He lost his beloved twin brother Manolo in 1982 to esophageal cancer, the mother he adored (Lucia) but who was never there for him in 2005, and his worshipped wife to a sudden aneurysm following knee surgery in 2003. His father left his mother early in the piece and never showed up in his life again. He never met his eldest brother Pedro as he was given to a family member during his mother's 5 year incarceration in a Franco prison which also included a death sentence by firing squad (which was fortunately overturned).
Miro was a Tuberculosis survivor, a paratrooper in the Germany army, and a natural horticulturalist and artist (woodcarving). He and his only sister (my mother) weren't close due to personal resentments and my mother's overall flippant nature. Because of his difficult life Miro wasn't the kindest father and this created later estrangement from his three children, particularly his eldest daughter who had not spoken to him in over two years at the time of his death four years ago. I had had a strained relationship with him also, but in later years we grew closer, and he cared about my children who filled the places of his own. He was also close to my husband Adam, as the true Spanish man's man that he was.
The death of his wife Grazia was what hit him hardest though, and he burned a tea candle each day since her death in order to let her know she was never far from his heart. I actually went into his room once inside his little Morgan shack and saw the big box filled to the brim with spent tea candle foils. He is with her now, I just know it.
As the only member of my dysfunctional family left in 2018 who still showed me any form of love and respect, I miss my uncle terribly. I saw him just days before his death from a pituitary tumor and I'll never forget the howls of sadness that came out of my body. The final blow arrived when his children did not allow me to attend his farewell.
In my autobiography Edelmiro is credited as Eduardo.
Edelmiro (left), Grazia (centre), and Lucia (right)
My Auntie Grazia was born in 1945 on the 5th of November in Sicily, Italy as Grazia Allegra. I don’t have a lot of background history on her except that she was alone in Rome, pregnant, and discarded by the father of her child when my Uncle Miro met her.
Uncle Miro married Grazia but on the proviso her unborn child would be given up for adoption. They were married not long before the baby’s arrival in Rome, inside a Catholic Church situated alongside the Tiber River in Lungotevere Mellini not far from where we all lived in 21 Via Pietro Cavallini. The baby, a little girl, was given up for adoption as negotiated but from what little I know of the situation, my Auntie never got over her loss and began searching for her a few years before her death to no avail. According to my mother, she felt sorry for the baby and had considered adopting her but, already a struggling single mother with me in tow, soon changed her mind (or perhaps it had been changed for her?)
Edelmiro and Grazia had their own child, a girl in 1972, and moved to Australia to begin a new life soon after. They settled in Adelaide South Australia where two more children followed. The marriage between Grazia and Miro was tumultuous but both professed a great love for the other in spite of several brief separations and when Grazia died unexpectedly and suddenly from an aneurysm following knee surgery aged fifty-eight, Edelmiro was inconsolable and struggled to continue living without his Querida Esposa.
I greatly loved my Auntie Grazia. She was the mother I always wanted. A true mother in every sense.
In my autobiography Grazia is credited as Gianna.
My stepfather Alfio Gemmellaro, entered my life in 1974 when he asked my mother Gloria to marry him whilst living in Rome.
Alfio was born in Catania Sicily, in 1942 on the 8th of May. He was one of six siblings and was made to leave school aged nine and barely literate in order to help the family with paid work. In rural Sicily this was a common practice and I’m certain that many children born during the war weren’t encouraged the ‘unnecessary’ privilege of an education during long periods of poverty and hunger.
Alfio worked as a piano re-conditioner and painter among other menial jobs. He was conscripted in the Italian military aged sixteen but I’m not certain for how long or where he served. Alfio’s gift lay in his rich tenor voice which left everyone who’d heard him sing stunned into silence and had him compared to the great Enrico Caruso, and later, to Luciano Pavarotti.
His talent earned him a number of competition type nominations which saw Alfio making the move to Italy’s capital in search of fame and fortune. Because Alfio was not industry/academically trained, the best he could do was eke a living in Theatre Restaurant performance. It was at the famed Da Meo Pattacca Ristorante in Trastevere Rome, where he met my mother who although highly trained as an operatic singer, had to accept side hustles to keep herself, me, and her mother afloat in one of Europe’s most expensive cities.
When myself, Gloria, and my grandmother Lucia emigrated to Australia in 1975, Alfio’s abundant excess weight did not allow him migratory permission. The only way he could enter the country was by being billeted as my mother’s husband. Gloria left me and my grandmother with my Uncle Edelmiro and Auntie Grazia in Adelaide Australia (they had left Italy three years prior), and returned to marry Alfio thus bringing him back with her three months later.
In 1976 Gloria gave birth to his son and subsequently only child Piernatale who was born with a significant intellectual disabilty. My mother attributed the defect to a variety of reasons, one being Alfio’s suspected syphilis from Sicilian prostitutes he frequented as a teenage boy.
Life for me living with a narcissist (my mother), a disabled half brother, and an antiquated, uneducated stepfather was increasingly difficult. I resented Alfio’s conservative ruling in our household even more than my mother’s brutal emotional attacks and made this resentment known in many a precarious and defiant way which did not improve my at home living situation.
The photo of Alfio (above) is bittersweet in that my stepfather was hopelessly addicted to eating. He did not work, living off the Australian government his entire life since his arrival, and purchased proverbial stodge and liquidated grocery items as it turned out, Alfio was skimming our meagre welfare funds and sending regular portions to his relatives in Sicily. Piernatale too stacked on the weight which caused his right femur to collapse, replacing it with a steel prosthetic during his early twenties.
As my mother’s and Alfio’s marriage deteriorated, so did Alfio’s health. Diabetes and the overload and misuse of various medicinals forced Alfio’s organs to shut down one by one. Alfio died whilst living in a Western Sydney Suburb nursing home in his early sixties. Both his his legs were starting to gangrene due to diabetic illness. Even with death looming over him, Alfio refused to take dieting seriously.
In my autobiography Alfio is credited as Alfonso.
