A West Berbice, Region Five (Mahaica-Berbice) woman continues to defy the odds as she celebrated her 102nd birthday on Saturday. Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 restrictions, many of her family members couldn’t be with her to celebrate this milestone.
Virginia Euphemia Watts celebrates her special day with family members – Photo Credit: (Guyana Chronicle)
Born on September 5, 1918, Virginia Euphemia Watts has been making the proverbial lemonade with the lemons that life has been consistently throwing at her. In fact, at age 102, she still remembers all of her grandchildren and great-grands by name.
Watts, called “Aunty Baby,” has now lost her sight and can no longer walk after she slipped and fell in April 2018. In her younger days, she was a seamstress and made clothing for persons throughout the West Berbice and was also actively involved in Local Government Elections.
The former seamstress loves singing. However, on Saturday, she was not in the mood to sing for relatives. Records shown to this publication indicate that her mother died at age 55, and her father was 75. Virginia was the first of six children, all of whom have passed away – none making it past age 75. Five of her six children are still alive.
One of her daughters, Georgina, provided the medical background of the family. She stated that her mother was tasked with taking care of her siblings.
“Her mother died when she was at a tender age, so she was in charge of five other siblings, and so she had to drop out of school… she had to do the laundry, the cooking, the sewing, and everything.”
Another of her children, Carole, has spent all of her 68 years with her mother and knows her better than anyone else.
“At her 101 birthday, one of the church members indicated to her that God has blessed her life to see 101, and she turned and said 102 will be better, those were her exact words,” Carole recalled.
In her younger days, Aunty Baby loved pepperpot and black-eyed peas cook-up, but now she is mostly on a liquid diet. All the beautiful cakes she made in the past are now just memories. She has 13 grandchildren and 15 great-grandchildren.
“Looking at the history of her relatives; the age they lived to, we said ‘that’s it.’ So, we kept a big 90th birthday. The next thing you know, she reached 91, so we kept another big birthday… and every year it is the same, we are saying that this is the last birthday,” Carol said, adding that she is grateful that she is still alive.
[Extracted and Modified from Guyana Times]
