Richard Matrenza writes:

I never met her personally. What I have known of her and about her has cascaded to me via her sons Graham and, indirectly, Fr Trevor.

“By their fruit you shall know them!” How very true of Sylvia. She left this mortal life on July 22 at the very ripe age of 94 years. I should have said ‘eventful’.

Born in Malta in 1921, growing up in the arid economic years of the 1920s and 1930s in the Maltese islands was not easy when leading an urban life. One can only imagine what it was like in one of the outlying rural villages. The only consolation and hard-hitting lessons came from the fact that Sylvia was reared by the glebe of the hard land.

“Full many a flower is born to blush unseen and waste its sweetness on the desert air,” said the poet in his elegy.

Sylvia was born and raised in humble and hard circumstances. The sweetness that I understand was denied her by birth was transmuted and translated in the upright family she raised.

I wish I had known her personally.

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