Hi everyone.. I hope you are all keeping safe xxx
I just want to bring home to you all what this time means for me. I will go back in time to share my roots.. my Grandfather was Turkish Cypriot and my Grandmother Greek cypriot, they had five children, my father being their only son. During the early 60’s my grandparents felt my father would be in a dangerous situation from everyone and sent him to England. He already had two sisters that were there.
That was were he met my mother who is half Irish half Italian and my father never returned. One of my aunts married and lived in Dali with her husband and 4 children and my other aunt who remained in cyprus married and lived in Lurucina where my grandparents resided. My aunt who lived in Lurucina was unable to have children so after 74 my grandparents who had spent so much of their time helping my aunt from Dali with her children was now cut off from the life she knew.
The only way they could see each other was through the UN arranging them to meet in pile every 6 months. My grandmother never recovered from this. She also had an older brother that was a priest who used to spend most of his time in her home with his children they lived in Lympia.
After 74 he took his wife and children and they moved to Australia. My Grandmother died on my 11th birthday july 1980. In 2005 my father gave me my grandparents house and I moved to cyprus with my husband and my two son’s who were 13 and 14. We couldn’t restore the house so we built a new house where theirs stood. Bring this story to date my youngest son moved to the south when he was 18 and stayed with his friend. There is where he met Koulla.
At age 20 they had their first child a son Joseph and four years later a daughter Andriana. Both our family and my daughter in laws family have a great relationship, we share holidays together and all family gatherings.
My grandchildren spend all holidays staying in Lurucina with me though their actual home and schooling in the south. Now we are in this situation and I don’t know when i’ll physically see my son, daughter in law and grandchildren again.
Yes we call on skype but Joseph gets distressed because he wants to come and stay with me while his school is shut (this is what normally happens). It brought home to me what my grandmother suffered. Grandchildren in England she couldn’t see and then her Grandchildren just the other side of the hill of her home might as well have been the other side of the world.
I’m scared if my grandchildren get ill and I can’t be there with them, i’m worried how long the borders will remain shut and the physiological effect this will have on the children because the life they know has been stopped for now. I worry how my daughter in law is coping when she has had my support all the time with the children.
Since borders opened and we have been able to share our lives with each other we now need to use this time to reflect what permanent partition will mean to us all. We should now realise how much we do need each other and that we all belong to this Island and that the Island does not belong to us or any other country.
I love you all and I wish you all to be safe during this hard time and I hope we recover quickly from the threat of this virus. We should not only hope to return to open borders as quickly as possible we must now use this experience to fully unite and have no borders.
Love and peace to you all xxxxx
Original Facebook Post by Cy Rozalia Ki,
