Finding Rosa is not only a memoir. Coming out of Caterina Edwards’ personal experience—and a stint in the Banff Centre for the Arts’ literary journalism program—it is also a documentary that traces out the lost past of Rosa Pia Pagan Edwards. The demise of her mother’s mind and body draws Edwards to want to know the woman Rosa once was—and leads her through the “forgotten, suppressed, denied history of her homeland and her people.”
Rosa was born in Istria — now part of Croatia, but at the time of her birth in 1908, part of Italy. It’s a land and a people that were lost to war, ethnic cleansing and the premeditated destruction of records and archives to wipe out all evidence of the Istrians. As such, there is much mystery surrounding Rosa’s past—certain things she herself kept secret, but so much of her history was literally destroyed, making it all the more difficult for Edwards to discern the truth of her mother’s past. Rosa’s deteriorating mind made it impossible for Edwards to access the past through her memory, in addition to the fact that Rosa’s own stubbornness and singularity of purpose enabled her to construct barriers that her daughter could not break down. Edwards makes trips to her mother’s hometown — called Lussino when it was part of Italy, now Losinj in Croatia — in search of answers from ageing relatives. She also visits Aunt Enea and a series of cousins in Venice, trying desperately to piece together the complex puzzle that is her mother—to understand her anger and hostility, and to uncover her secrets. These trips are peppered with long hours in records rooms, archives and libraries, both in Canada and abroad.
What Edwards discovers goes well beyond her expectations. The systematic elimination of the Istrians during the First World War, Rosa’s forced separation from her parents at the age of 10 to ensure her safety, her work ethic forged by a too-early independence—and, perhaps most marking of all, witnessing her father being conscripted by the Austrians in 1915—all this, Edwards uncovers through painstaking research while simultaneously caring for her deteriorating mother. And she finally pieces together why her mother may have been depressed, emotionally impenetrable and deeply uncompassionate all her life: Rosa’s sister, who is Edwards’ Aunt Maricci, reveals that when they witnessed their father’s conscription, Rosa went into screaming hysterics and Maricci had to stifle her younger sister’s screams because the Austrian soldiers threatened to shoot her if she didn’t stop. As Rosa leans towards death, Edwards understands how the trauma of her father’s conscription and the brutality of this death threat may have altered her mother beyond any expectation. In essence, she recognizes in a profound manner that this loss of innocence shaped Rosa’s life in startling ways.
For Edwards, the journey through her mother’s past is defining. It is not only about discovering a woman she didn’t really know or understand, but it is also about discovering herself. Rosa’s deterioration teaches Edwards about her own strength—her strength to carry Rosa through to the end, and to see her as an individual who experienced great pain, fear, loss and regret. Finding Rosa is as much Edwards’ story as it is Rosa’s—heartwrenching and not to be forgotten.
Carolyne Van Der Meer is a Montreal journalist and editor who is completing a Ph.D. dissertation in Canadian literature at Université of Montréal. Her poetry and fiction have been published in Carte Blanche, Bibliosofia, Helios and the Hudson Gazette, with more forthcoming in Canadian Woman Studies.
