Alfreda Klimowicz

KLIMOWICZ: Alfreda “Freda / Fredzia”; (nee Zybura) Passed away peacefully, surrounded by the love of son and daughter in law, at the Hamilton Health Sciences Satellite Facility, on Wednesday May 18th 2022. Loving wife of the late Michael - Michal (1993). Beloved mother of Arthur (Donna Patterson). Dear sister of Theresa (Alan) Norgate, and predeceased by her parents Ewa, Adam, her siblings Edward, Stanley, Janina, Carl, Czeslawa, She will also be missed by many nieces, nephews, cousins, friends and extended family members. Only in the last few years did my mother ever really need my help. She was always incredibly independent and not accepting much help from others. She was also a relentless perfectionist, never really satisfied with anything she did. Known for sewing all of our clothes while gaining inspiration for personal self-fulfillment through Jackie O. Mom was beautiful! And she created a family and home to match. I will always believe the method of her critiques is at the core of my own successes. Thanks for being a visionary, mom. My mother was always very religious. She often told me a Catholic Mass would give her real peace and strength. I'm sure her beliefs played a vital role in her life as she was a strong, single-minded person. The Zybura family were abruptly taken from war-torn Poland, leaving a sister with relatives, later losing a brother and their father in Siberia, shuttled to various countries and finally settling in warm hospitable Santa Rosa in Mexico. A life where only the strong survive. But she most remembered how much she loved Mexico, eating delicious sweet bread and hearing joyous Mariachi music. We brought her a taco in her last days. She only had one bite yet her face smiled. In response to mom's passing, other family members consistently told me of her vast sense of hospitality: warm, gracious, a great cook and loving personality. Her yearly masterpiece, prepared with her mother and sisters, was Wigilia. If you were there, you would remember it fondly. I am fortunate to grow up in this family and for me, the family was led by my mother. She loved her family like they loved her. I often felt like my cousins were like brothers and sisters, probably because that was her spirit. My cousins' children were all uncompromisingly taken under her care, all for the asking. Mom will be remembered dearly by generations of our family. For my parents, all but one vacation involved family and friends. Once my parents visited Busch Gardens in Florida. There, they would walk for hours through greenery maximizing their complete love of nature. We would take, with her insistence, a fragile 87 year old woman down into crummy Red Hill Creek, and she would look around and say, Beautiful!. An avid gardener, she always had a flourishing garden supplementing the dinner menu with home grown extras. We ate a lot of tomatoes. And a veritable jungle in her sitting room growing varieties that few know how to nurture. She was outside so much and until a late age, that if you Google street-view her address... There's mom making sure her plants were perfect. I was her kochany syn and Donna, her droga synowa. Funeral Mass will be celebrated at St Stanislaus Polish Church, 8 St Ann Street, on Wednesday June 29th 2022 at 11:00 a.m. Interment to follow at Holy Sepulchre Cemetery, Burlington. Cremation has taken place. As expressions of sympathy, donations made to the Alzheimers Society Hamilton would be gratefully appreciated.

Mother, Alfreda, Freda, Fredzia, we will love you forever.