Dr Joe Zammit Ciantar

Carmela was a humble village girl when she married my father, Ġużeppi, from Xewkija, in the early 1940s. They started home in her hometown, Ta’ Sannat, Gozo, but moved house to Rabat soon after the end of the Second World War. They had six children: Lydia, me, another Lydia, Anton, Marija, and Giovanni. She lost her 18-month- old first daughter in the explosion of two German bombs in 1942, and suffered another loss when my sister Lydia aged 20, died in 1964 – a death which took away her solar smile, forever.

For me, my mother was the hardest working housewife, waking up early every morning, hearing the 6.00a.m. mass at nearby Ta’ Pompej church, and tending to house cleaning, cooking, making clothes for us, washing clothes with her hands, and helping my father in all the odd little jobs he used to do, even helping him skin birds for stuffing; my father was a taxidermist. She was always at home, dedicated to the family; clothes, shoes, books, school, doctrine lessons – she was the master organizer, guiding us to adulthood. And she was jealous of our achievements at school, and proud to share our ‘good results’ with friends. She was a sincere practising Catholic and she definitely left her imprint in this aspect on me and my sister and brothers. I never heard her utter a vulgar word, let alone a swear word. She was very rigid in her discipline and did not spare the rod when she thought it fit to teach us a lesson. When I started teaching in 1960 she would boast; ‘It-tifel laħaq assistant!’. She used to wake me up early every Monday morning, to cross over to Malta. Back home, late Friday evening, she would wash my clothes and get them ready for the following week. She was so happy when I met Irma. And she adored our three children. The smile on her face was always restrained; she could never forget the void my sister Lydia left when we were still all at home. Mother was very sick when she passed away in August 1995, two days after my wife and I returned to Malta from a holiday in Canada; she waited to see us back, before passing away.