Norma Pizzino, aged 79, passed away peacefully in her sleep last Thursday night after suffering from a severe stroke a few weeks earlier.
She has left behind grieving family and friends but despite the sadness of her passing her youngest daughter Linda D’Lima fondly remembers her mother as a kind and caring lady who was very strong in her faith.
“She never missed her 3 ‘o clock prayer.” Mrs D’Lima said.
“She was always praying and always had her Bible with her; many times people would ask her, you’re still praying and she would give them the look as if to say ‘leave me alone.’”
Norma Pizzino was born in Calcutta, India now known as Kolkata, in 1933. She met George Arthur Cameron and married him in 1951.
“She married her soul mate,” Linda D’Lima said.
Norma Pizzino settled into married life, raised four children and thoroughly enjoyed her job as a nurse’s aid in the Assembly of God Hospital, Calcutta, but with the birth of her first Australian grandchild in 1991 she came out to Australia and never looked back.
“She made many friends in Australia.” Mrs D’Lima said. “It was really funny though; I used to live with my husband in a block of flats in Highgate and one day I was with mum in the lift taking her to the top floor to see the view when another lady stepped into the lift with us.”
The lady turned out to be Elizabeth Foster, a childhood friend of Norma Pizzino.
They hadn’t seen each other in years and suddenly and unexpectedly found each other in a lift in Highgate and it was as if they had never been parted.
“From then on they became inseparable, Mrs D’Lima said.
Elizabeth Foster’s friendship played a key role in both Norma’s life as well as her daughter’s.
Mrs Foster introduced Linda D’Lima to her future husband; she also introduced Norma to Giovani Pizzino.
Mrs Pizzino first husband George Cameron died in 1971 and twenty years later she married for the second time on September 21, 1991.
In 1994 she became a regular at Good Shepherd Parish in Kelmscott having previously attended Mercy Church in Girrawheen.
“Come rain, hail or shine, mum faithfully went to church.” Mrs D’Lima said.
“Her favourite seat was the third row from the front, closest to the aisle and if anyone was sitting there she would give them the look and whisper to me and say ‘Linda they’re in my seat’ and I would whisper back saying ‘mum it’s not your seat.”
Mrs Pizzino joined in all the activities that Good Shepherd Parish held and she was very fond of cooking curries and jiving with her friends and Father Cyprian, former parish priest at Good Shepherd.
“I loved watching mum jive she was very good at it,” Mrs D’Lima said. Norma Pizzino will be greatly missed by her family and friends.
For all who knew her she will be remembered as a kind, and devout lady with a great sense of humour and always ready to help.