Hon Asot Michael: Eulogy of WINIFRED AGATHA SARKIS

Eulogy in memory of my

Beloved grand-mother

WINIFRED AGATHA SARKIS

Born on Market Street, St. John's,

Antigua on 19th January, 1919.

Died on 26th February, 2002

in Guadeloupe.

Delivered by: Asot Anthony Michael
"Farewell to you and the youth I have spent with you. It was but yesterday we met in a dream. You have sung to me… and built a tower in the sky.
But now our dream is over... and we must part.
If in the twilight of memory we should meet once more, we shall speak again together, and you shall sing to me a deeper song.
And if our hands should meet in another dream, we shall build another tower in the sky."
Friends and family, these are the parting words of Kahlii Gibran, The Prophet, poet of the poor Kadisha Valley in northeastern Lebanon, the birth place of all of my ancestors. He was one of the spiritual artists of the western world.
The poorest village in this harsh but beautiful land is Bazoun, clinging to the mountain side of the gorge, a few miles from where Gibran now rests, overlooking all the Christian villages below.
Winnie’s parents, Anthony Mitchell Michael and Annie Michael, were married in the village church, almost a hundred years ago. It is the church of Sidy Bazoun. It is still used daily; still filled on Sundays; and still cherished by the villagers. It was refurbished not long ago by the efforts and kindness of Winnie, in the name of her father, whose name is written in the marble of the walls, the altar, the communion rails and the floor.
Their parents came to Antigua soon after their marriage. Winnie, their sixth child, was born above the family store on Market Street. Her life as a child was disciplined and frugal. She worked and studied hard. She never got a new dress or shoes from her parents. She wore the "hand-me-down clothes and shoes of her older sisters, Hynd and Olive. She never used cosmetics until she met her husband Jean. But yet her parents were kind. On Saturdays, they would give the poor people coming along Market Street crackers, salt beef and red herring.
She learnt from them kindness, and a fundamental love for the people of Antigua. Even though she lived in Guadeloupe all her adult life, she considered herself Antiguan; used an Antiguan and Barbudan passport; and went there often. She was a very close friend of the late Right Honorable V.C., Bird Prime Minister and father of that country, and felt privileged to go to Antigua and celebrate with him Antigua's Statehood in 1967, and Antigua and Barbuda's Independence in 1981. She was also good friends with Donald Haistead, a member the Opposition.
She was a special friend of the Mayo Clinic. The Board of Governors of the Mayo Foundation gave her an award in recognition of her monetary support of the Foundation, and of her fifty consecutive years as a patient there. In 1995 when hurricane Luis devastated Antigua, working from Mayo Clinic where she was visiting, Winnie orchestrated a relief effort, sending containers of food and clothing from that state. She convinced the Mayo Clinic to send hospital supplies and needed medication. She organized, by telephone, assistance from the Florida Cruise Ship Association, two thousand miles away. And she encouraged her son Tony to charter six flights to Antigua from Guadeloupe with food, water, and relief supplies. This plane was the first to land at V.C. Bird Airport after the hurricane,
Winnie learnt from her parents the joy one gets from loving and helping poor people. They were her friends. She found more comfort in their company than in the polite chatter of the well-to-do and the powerful. She was humble, ordinary, forthright and kind. And she taught us, by her example, the same lessons. You can see her children and grand-children, in Guadeloupe and Antigua, following in her wake. We came to know the joy of her style of living and loving of giving and caring..
She also learnt from her parents the value of a good education, something they never had. Winnie was one of the first graduates of The Convent High School, which was located on High Street in St. John's Antigua, the building now used by the Treasury. She sent her daughters to the Ursuline Convent in Barbados. All her children went to Antigua in their holidays, to learn English.
Winnie had thoughts of becoming a nun; that is, until one Mr. Jean Sarkis came to Antigua to visit his friend, her brother Asot (ray father's father). Jean saw her in her school uniform, age 17, and was struck by her beauty, and the sparkle in her eye.
Winnie's parents were not in favour of letting their young "schoolgirl" marry such a worldly man, 17 years her senior, even though he was a successful and wealthy businessman. In fact, their very thoughts were put into words by the onlookers on Market Street on the wedding day, as Jean and Winnie went to church: "Poor Miss Winnie", they lamented. "Where she going with that old French man?"
You know where they went, ladies and gentlemen. They went on to fifty years of marital happiness until Jean died in November 1985. They had five loving children, nine grand-children, and one great-grandchild.
But let me complete the fairytale of how Jean succeeded in getting Winnie. My other grand-father, his friend Asot Michael, went over to his young sister standing there in obedience and expectation; took off her school tie, and gave it to Jean. And the rest, as they say, is chemistry. In gratitude, some twenty-five years later, Winnie used all of her motherly persuasion on her youngest daughter (Josette, my mother) to marry (and hopefully bring some stability) to Asot's problematic only son, my father Patrick. Later on, Winnie felt obliged to keep them together in turbulent times, always taking Patrick's side, and giving no encouragement whatsoever to Josette to seek the calmer waters of Pointe-a-Pitre. That was not easy for a mother to do. My sisters and I are grateful to our grand-mother for so doing.
Please do not conclude from what I've said that Winnie did not love her children. She loved them with a passion, and defended them fiercely when they incurred the anger of their father. Nobody else I knew had the courage to go face to face with Jean Sarkis on the rampage. She even took the enormous risk of taking money from his business, without his knowledge and against his will, to give to his children when he punished them by cutting off their funds and the source of their mischief.
And do not conclude from what I just said that she did not love her husband. She adored him. He taught her everything she did not learn at school. She learnt the business and eventually became the matriarch of his empire. Because most of his purchasing was done in English-speaking countries (Hong Kong, Japan, U.S.A., England, Trinidad) she was his translator, and eventually his negotiator. She used her gentler, kinder tones to soften Jean's combative, aggressive business style. She smoothed over, and saved, many a difficult deal. She became the perfect counter-part to Jean's booming cannon.
And they made beautiful music. He introduced her to the finer things of life. He taught her what the nuns could not. They took vows of poverty and chastity. But no so big Jean! He travelled with Winnie many times around the world. She became quite cultured in food, drink-, clothing, jewelry, and other worldly pleasures. Do you know that after her first sampling of the pleasures of the flesh, on the night of their wedding, my grand-mother thought it was so sinful that she confessed it to the priest? Our family shall remain forever grateful to that understanding priest for the kind words of encouragement he must have spoken to her in the confessional.
My grandmother drank deeply From the river of life. She was worldly. She was bright and  mischievous, joyous and kind. She was hard-working. and Cod-fearing. And in. all of her efforts, in business and in -the home she worked with love.
"And what is it to work with love?" Kahlil Gibran asked. "It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart. It is to build a house with affection.
It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with Joy.
It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit.
And to know that all the blessed dead are standing about you and watching."
The I Prophet’s most memorable line for our people is this:-
“Work is love made visible”
We are the inheritors of that ethic; the descendants of that sparse village on the Mount Lebanon; hardworking and Gods-fearing; loyal to family, tribe and religion, in that order; in a country of no real cohesion.
We can see his simple wooden coffin in a stone cave at the head of the valley (just outside the town of Bcharre) and the words which he wrote as his own epitaph, fire-branded on an ordinary rough log next to his body.
“I am alive, like you.
And I now stand beside you.
If you want to see me,
Close your eyes, and look around.
You will see me in front of you."
We see you, Winnie darling,
We see your impish smile.
We hear your bursts of laughter,
We feel your love sublime.
We thank you for your kindness,
The thirst you had for life.
You showed us how to quench it,
With joy and grace and style.
Let me speak, in closing, the last three lines from Gibran's chapter On Death:
"Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.
And when you have reached
the mountain top, Then you
shall begin to climb.
And when the earth shall
claim your limbs, then shall
you truly dance."
Sing loud, Winnie darling,
Sing with that crystal voice.
Sing your song of joy.
We have climbed the mountain behind you.
We have reached, in the new world, the valley of comfort and abundance.
We still work with love.
We eat from your orchard; and we drink from your vines.
And at harvest time, my darling, at the setting of the sun,
we shall remember you.
And we shall dance.
MAY HER SOUL REST IN PEACE