Rev. Fr. Marcus Rupesinghe, OMI, passed away on November 18. He was 88 years and nine months. Sixty years of his life was dedicated to the service of the Lord as an ardent and devoted member of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate.
Early in life, Fr. Rupe was employed, and did a short stint in the government service, worked in the Oil Control Department. It was then that the Lord took control of the lamp of Fr. Rupe’s life – oil, wick and all. He lived up to the motto, “Ardere et Lucere” – to burn and to shine. Not only did Fr. Rupe burn and shine, he dazzled as an exemplary and holy priest. It is an irony that the more Fr. Rupe wanted to be backstage, behind the scenes, the more he came into the limelight.
Fr. Rupe served the Oblate Congregation in many capacities – as Provincial Treasurer, Superior, Formator and Chaplain. He obtained his Doctorate in Canon Law (DCL) at the Gregorian University. He was much sought after and consulted, especially by the hierarchy. Yet he was simple and unassuming. Surely and steadily, he grew in wisdom and age, and he grew old gracefully. His infrequent physical ailments did not cause him anxiety. I knew Fr. Rupe for almost 10 years. He was my constant guide, counsellor and confessor.
Fr. Rupe never categorized people as sinners. To him, a penitent sinner was a potential saint. At the time of his passing away, he was the confessor and chaplain to the Corpus Christi Carmel at Mattakkuliya. A much saddened Carmelite nun commented: “Now, we have a Saint in heaven.”
I fully endorse that.
The Oblate Province in Sri Lanka has lost a colossus. His demise creates a void that cannot be filled. We know that Fr. Rupe has given a good account of his stewardship to his Master.
Farewell, dear Fr. Rupe. In the sweet by and by, we shall meet on that beautiful shore.
Russel Fernando
Christmas won’t be the same without Achchi
Ena Dharmaratne
It was always difficult to choose the right Christmas gift for my grandmother. Not that she was fussy. But in the last few years of her life, the usual brightly-hued saree or cloth was not the obvious choice. She loved all things sweet (except soft chocolate which got into her dentures) but how many sweets could you gift a 95-year-old?
This would be the first Christmas without her. Well not quite. There were at least two other years when she had visited her other grandchildren Down Under. But this time the lack of Achchi is final. She is not in another country. She is simply not on this earth.
Achchi is part of my earliest memories. I was her eldest grandchild and with her I have spent many a lazy afternoon under the shade of an old mango tree, watching her dry salted Billing fruit in the sun, or looking after her chickens. Her kitchen was smokey, old-world affair where village women would pound rice and we could always find some tasty morsel in a blackened cupboard.
She taught me to plant seeds and watch them grow. My love for gardening, especially growing vegetables, is mostly due to the time spent in her own garden. She would hate to see a yellowed, rotted leaf on plants, and I still feel guilty when my own potted plants sport a faded leaf. She was an ardent ‘garden sweeper’ and would be seen with the ekel broom at all hours. This was almost an obsession with her and led to a number of family puns. But in the end, her insistence of a neat lawn first thing in the dew-ridden morning affected her weak lungs, and may have contributed to her early death. Yes, she was 95 but in the pink of health in all other ways but for her lungs.
My grandmother shunned convention for herself, but insisted on it in others. She would gleefully recount how she was expelled from school (for carrying an older sibling’s love notes) but later became a teacher under the disciplinarian tutelage of Catholic nuns. She married well into her thirties and to someone many years her junior. She would recall how there was no one to give her away at the wedding (her father long dead and her brother disapproving of the union) and how my grandfather, breaking all convention,walked down the aisle to accompany his bride to the altar.
It was she who discovered that my husband (then boyfriend) and I are fourth cousins, many times removed. Achchi was my husband’s grandmother’s second cousin. This led to a number of never-completed family tree discussions and the discovery of many old photographs, documents of a once-powerful coastal clan. If not for Achchi’s keen memory of the past, the link may never have been discovered. As if to complement this bright historical memory, she was totally absent minded of recent events. She was known to lose her rosary at least once a month, and frantic family-wide search parties were deployed. One Christmas she lost her dentures, and all gifts had to be security checked before leaving premises. Fortunately she found them that evening with her own things.
Achchi had a legendary voice. She loved to sing and no family gathering was complete without her renditions of (at times bawdy) oldies. I remember a moonlit night in Dickoya, some sherry and my grandmother entertaining a group of strangers late into the night. She was tickled pink when they declared her ‘a national treasure’ because she could remember word-for-word songs that were long lost in the mists of time.
My last pleasant memory of Achchi is of her sitting on her bed at home, breathing laboriously yet trying to keep up with my three-year old daughter’s ‘Twinkle Little Star’ and then singing (albeit weakly) all seven verses of a favourite song- all the while correcting mistakes of relatives trying to sing along with her.
That was last June. She died peacefully in her sleep at home, in her bed. Life overtakes you, especially when two toddlers are included in the equation. There has been no time to mourn her loss, or reflect on how much she has influenced my life. Until Christmas time comes, you write down the gift list and realize there is no Achchi in it.
Tharuka Dissanaike
The fragrance of a well-lived life lingers on
Damayantha Wickramesinghe
I saw Damayantha last when she came to my house to give me a copy of the beautifully edited memoir of her father, H.A.J. Hulugalle. As we talked for a while, I could see that she was frail and ill, but her indomitable spirit shone through and she wasted no time in self-pity.
It had obviously given her great satisfaction to produce this book in which she brought out the essence of a great man. Her family members and friends will feel comforted that she was able to complete this labour of love before she was called to rest.
Damayantha was a little junior to me in school, but I knew her as a lively schoolgirl who did well both in her studies and in sports and who was popular with her fellow students and liked by her teachers. She was a school prefect in her senior years and when Ladies’ College moved to “Uplands”, Kandy, during the war, Damayantha was among the happy band of LC-ites who thoroughly enjoyed boarding school in the new environment.
I came to know her better after we had both left school. She served as president of the Old Girls’ Association and I admired the way in which she handled tricky situations firmly and fairly.
She took a science degree at university and continued her sports activities, winning women’s events at the university and also at other athletic meets. After graduation Damayantha taught science at Visakha Vidyalaya for a few years. She will probably be remembered more, however, as the teacher responsible for launching the Visakhians into athletics at school and then encouraging them to participate in inter-school meets.
Damayantha was a public-spirited woman who believed in giving something back to the community. She served on the central board of the Lanka Mahila Samithi and was its general secretary. She was chairperson of the finance committee of the Sri Lanka Girl Guides Association and was on the Committee of ECLOF.
It was at university that Damayantha had met her future husband, S.K. I thought they might have met each other much earlier, for the fathers of both were highly-esteemed figures at Lake House. Both men shared a broad humanity in their outlook on life. I’m sure Damayantha’s and S.K’s union was a marriage of true minds. She was the perfect helpmeet for him as he attained eminence in business circles and later went to London as our High Commissioner. With her keen aesthetic sense, she refurbished the HC’s residence and laid out a beautiful garden there, as she later did at their home in Claasen Place when they returned to Sri Lanka.
In London, Damayantha was patron of the Women’s Council which was established to foster friendship and co-operation between Asian women and their counterparts in Britain.She was also patron of the Sri Lanka Women’s Association in Britain and she served on the Committee of the Commonwealth Countries League in London. She was specially chosen as chairperson of the London Commonwealth Fair in 1997 which had been designated as the Year of the Commonwealth. The Patron of the League was Betty Boothroyd, the then Speaker of the British House of Commons.
Having been an enthusiastic member of the Sri Lanka Mahila Samithi and its general secretary, Damayantha was ideally suited to represent Sri Lanka at international meetings and conferences of the Associated Countrywomen of the World.
As the eldest in a family of seven (two girls and five boys), she was a strength to her parents and was much loved and looked up to by her siblings.
Damayantha seemed to have inherited her father’s genial nature and her mother’s warm friendliness and caring disposition. She did her good deeds unostentatiously, not letting her right hand know what her left hand did, but she will be sadly missed by the many beneficiaries of her kindness and generosity. Her many friends will grieve that she is no more with them.
She was sustained by her deep Christian faith and did not let her mind dwell on negatives, but was always thankful for the blessings she enjoyed.
We can but offer our heartfelt sympathies to S.K., her husband of nearly 60 years, who will suffer an irreplaceable sense of loss at her departure, and to her brothers and her beloved only sister, all of whom will also feel a deep void in their lives.
I would repeat what I wrote of her father, that the enduring fragrance of a well-lived life lingers in the memory forever.
Anne Abayasekara |
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