Remembering Tita

From Christmas Photos 2008

This past August we lost one of our last living links to a previous generation. Raquel Prieto Humeres, affectionately known by her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren as “Tita” died at home in Santiago, Chile on the 25th of September 2008.

I first met Tita, or as she was styled “Señora Tita,” when I visited my husband's family in Eugene, Oregon for Christmas. Raul Antonio and I were engaged to be married that spring, and Tita had brought back a diamond ring for me in a setting that was typically Chilean, not a single stone, but five small diamonds placed next to one another in square settings.

Since we had very little money at that state in our lives, I had not intended to get an engagement ring, but my fiance surprised me by having Tita make a gift of the ring to me. I was so touched I could scarcely hold back tears, and I remember well her warm smile and her saying, “mi hija,” already drawing me into the family circle as a daughter.

When I think of Tita, the first word that comes to mind is “gracious.” More than anything Tita had the quiet aura and dignity of a woman from an earlier and more formal time. Her hair was always beautifully coiffed, her dress elegant, and her manners equally so.

Raul Antonio told me funny stories of how when she was traveling with his family in Europe one summer, she always had her small bottle of vermouth in her purse, and she would have an aperitif in the afternoon.

His mother would say that with two young, active boys and her youngest daughter in a stroller, all they needed was the parrot to complete the picture of a gypsy family on the Grand Tour, but Sra. Tita remained a little apart from the domestic bustle, and everyone did their part to insulate her as well from the stresses of travel.

This is not to say that Tita did not have her troubles, among them the heartache of losing two of her seven children. Since divorce was not legal in Chile, she lived apart from her husband, Raul Antonio Díaz Döll, during all the years I knew her. I saw them together on only one occasion when we brought my oldest son and their first great-grandchild to Chile at fifteen months to introduce him to his great-grandparents.

It is a source of great joy to me that my son, Alejandro, was able to grow up with both of them a part of his life until he became a young adult and that he was able to spend time talking with them and making that very rare bridge across three generations.

The last time I saw Tita was in a beautiful part of Chile on Lake Villarrica in February. She was very frail, and for the first time since I had known her, she had let her hair go completely white. I knew then that the time I had left with Señora Tita would likely be measured in months rather than years.

But though my heart was touched with sadness, I still took pleasure in talking to her, seeing her give me the same warm smile she had welcomed me with all those years ago when I was a young bride-to-be.

Good night, Tita. “And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!” (Hamlet, V.ii., 359-60)

Born: 8 August 1919
Died: 25 September 2008