By OSWALD T. BROWN
WASHINGTON, D.C., November 30, 2020 – As I noted I a column I wrote in August of 2012 when my late cousin Sylvia Elliott Ross died, the loss of a loved one is always painful and although death is inevitable, the pain is not lessened by this knowledge when someone close to you dies.
The deaths of my grandparents, Ben and Mabel Elliott—first Mama and then Papa—when I was a little boy were my first experiences with the debilitating nature of this level of excruciating pain. And when my saintly mother, Violet Corinne Elliott Brown, died in March of 1991, the depth of my despair was almost unfathomable.
I was living in Washington, D.C., at the time and had recently seen my mother a couple months earlier during my annual Christmas visit to The Bahamas, and she seemed to be in very good health. So when I received the call on March 10 from my Aunt Maria Elliott Forbes informing me that my mother had died, I became limp and incoherent and simply lost all composure.
I felt this same level of gut-wrenching pain when I heard about the death of my cousin Sylvia Elliott Ross. Although she was my first cousin, I grew up calling her Aunt Sylvia because she and Papa and Mama’s youngest child, Aunt Maria, were around the same age. Both were very instrumental in steering my life in the right direction during those formative years when young minds are so impressionable and vulnerable to inculcating life-long bad habits.
“Aunt” Sylvia’s father was my late uncle Clarence Elliott, the oldest of Ben and Mabel Elliott’s eight children; my mother Violet was the oldest of the four daughters. Because Cousin Sylvia and Aunt Maria were around the same age and they grew up like sisters, and all of the other grandchildren who were left in the care of Papa and Mama while our parents were on “The Contract” in the United States or working somewhere else in The Bahamas grew up calling her Aunt Sylvia.
In addition to myself, the five other grandchildren were cousins Agnes, Beryl and John, children of Uncle Lee; my late sister Elthreada Brown McPhee; and my cousin Alphonso “Boogaloo” Elliott, a son of my late Uncle Audley.
I felt that same “gut-wrenching” pain that unlocked a floodgate of tears when my cousin Norma Elliott, who lives in Brooklyn, New York, called me on the morning of August 21, 2019, with the devastating news that my Aunt Maria had died. We have a very closely knit family, and although she was born in New York, Norma grew up in Nassau with Aunt Maria from she was around three years old. When she graduated from college, she returned to live in New York.
After Aunt Maria, who had a long and distinguished career as an educator in The Bahamas, retired and her health deteriorated, Norma relocated her to New York to live with her. God blessed Aunt Maria with long life and she no doubt was mentally prepared for her exit from this earth when she died at the age of 91.
This morning, that “gut-wrenching” pain gripped me again and tears flowed freely when I found out – first via a post on Facebook by her son Derrick Elliott and later confirmed by her eldest son, Wayne Saldo Saunders, who lives in Chicago – that my first cousin Agnes Elliott, one of the eight grandchildren who grew up with Papa and Mama at Stanyard Creek, had died at the age of 84.
Both Derrick and Wayne had prepared me for this pending inevitability with Facebook messages about one week ago informing me that Agnes was seriously ill, but this knowledge did not mitigate the cutting pain that I felt on hearing the news.
Agnes was preceded in death by two of her siblings, John and Beryl, who also grew up with Papa and Mama. May their souls rest in peace.
