Threads of Memory
Threads of Memory
A Jayasinghe Family Memoir
For Natasha, Roshin, Durand, and Roanna — and for all the generations that follow
Prologue: The Weight of Heirlooms
Istand in my home in Sydney, thousands of kilometres from where these stories began, holding a brass bell that once belonged to my father, Don Thomas Jayasinghe. He used it in his office to summon messengers, its sharp ring cutting through the humid Ceylon air. Beside it sits a jewellery casket that belonged to my paternal grandmother, Dona Barbara Saram — a woman who lost her husband when my father was just an adolescent, who ran a shop to support her family, who stored not wealth but hope in this small wooden box.
I did not collect these items. My parents preserved them in our ancestral home, and I, like many youths, did not care for them then. But when my parents passed away, mortality whispered its truth: we are temporary, but our stories need not be. I brought these golden nuggets to Australia — not for their monetary value, but for the stories they carry, the hands that touched them, the lives they witnessed.
This memoir is not merely my story. It is the story of my grandparents, my parents, my siblings, and my children. It is the story of a family that spans continents, that survived colonial Ceylon and thrived in modern Australia, that held faith through mental illness and loss, that passed down not just heirlooms but resilience, not just names but character.
Part I: Roots in Eldeniya
Chapter 1: Lewis — A Courageous Man
The story begins with my maternal grandfather, Manchanayake Jayawardane Mudalige Don Lewis Jayawardane, born in 1890 in the village of Eldeniya, some sixteen kilometers from Colombo. His father was Don Cornelius Jayawardane; his mother, Dona Christina Nanayakkara — devout Catholics in colonial Ceylon, when the island still bore the scars and structures of foreign rule.
Lewis was the firstborn, the eldest child, and with that position came both privilege and pain. He watched three of his younger siblings die — two in infancy, one before reaching five years old. These were traumatic experiences that scarred his young soul. How does a boy process such losses? How does he continue to hope when death visits so frequently?
Perhaps these trials shaped his leadership. Lewis grew up knowing that life was fragile, that family was precious, that responsibility was not optional. He became a school principal, a man of education and standing, respected in his community. When his father died, Lewis stepped into his role with grace.
But his greatest test came much later.
Lewis married at thirty-five — late for his time, when life expectancy was short and men usually wed younger. His bride was Dona Euphracia Hamine, just twenty years old, fifteen years his junior. She was the youngest daughter of an established family from Mabima, ten kilometers away. They married on August 12, 1925, and together they would have three children: Christie (my uncle, whom I would come to know as Maama), Susan (my mother), and Catherine (my aunt).
The early years of their marriage seemed blessed. Lewis worked as a school principal, providing for his growing family. But tragedy waited in the wings, as it so often does.
Euphracia’s mother, Anna Ranasinghe, came to live with them in her old age. For months, Euphracia cared for her bedridden mother alone — bathing her, feeding her, managing the endless demands of terminal illness. When Anna finally died, the funeral was held at their home, as was the custom. Euphracia was tasked with washing her own mother’s body.
It was too much.
The grief, the exhaustion, the trauma — they broke something in Euphracia’s mind. Her behavior changed. She acted strangely, then erratically. She had suffered a mental breakdown, but in 1940s Ceylon, there were no psychiatrists, no therapists, no understanding of mental illness. There was only stigma, fear, and institutionalisation.
Lewis faced an impossible choice: keep his wife at home, where she might harm herself or their children, or send her to a mental asylum, where she would be locked away from everything she knew. He chose what he believed was safety. Euphracia was committed to an asylum, where she would remain for most of the rest of her life.
But Lewis did not abandon her. He visited regularly. He never remarried. He raised his three children alone, with the help of relatives and his own determination. This was his courage — not flashy or dramatic, but steady, enduring, faithful. He kept his family together when it would have been easier to let it fall apart.
I remember my grandfather, though I was only six when he died in 1961. I remember him as a gentle presence, a man who had survived more than any child could understand. When I look at the measuring tape that once belonged to him — made in England, with woven linen and hand-stitched leather — I think of how he measured his life: not in achievements or accolades, but in sacrifices made, in children raised, in promises kept.
Chapter 2: Barbara — The Shopkeeper’s Strength
While Lewis’s story unfolds on my mother’s side, my father’s side offers its own tale of resilience, embodied in my paternal grandmother, Dona Barbara Saram.
Barbara was widowed when my father, Thomas, was still an adolescent. In that era, a widow’s options were few. Many would have remarried or moved in with relatives, accepting dependence as their lot. But Barbara chose a different path: she opened a shop.
I have the copper measuring cups she used — the Seru and the Hundu, indigenous Sri Lankan measurements for rice. I have the brass tray she used to serve customers betel leaves, a social custom that revealed one’s place in the social hierarchy. Upper-class families used tall brass trays with carved designs. Barbara’s tray was not the most elaborate, but it was honest, functional, hers.
She ran that shop and raised her son alone. She had little material wealth — the jewellery casket I inherited from her was modest — but she raised a fine man. My father, Don Thomas Jayasinghe, became a respected government officer, a man who valued education, who moved his family forward, who taught his own children the value of hard work and dignity.
I called Barbara “Kadayamma” — grandmother — and she was my favourite person in the world. She lived with us in our big house, always kind, always helpful. We did many things together: cleaned floors, cooked in the kitchen, gardened. She told me stories while we worked, and at night, she told me stories until I fell asleep in her bed.
She taught me practical skills, like how to shred coconut — a crucial ingredient in Sri Lankan cooking. She showed me how to hold the coconut half firmly, how to move my hands in different directions, how to avoid scraping the brown shell that would make it taste bitter. She taught me to sit properly on the coconut shredder, a wooden stool with a metal blade attached, saying, “You will be big one day; then you won’t need your grandmother or mother to do these things.”
She taught me to respect animals. We had chickens and a pig in our garden — they were both pets and food. Our loyal dog Rover would run around her, his black tail wagging joyfully, chasing birds but never bothering our hens. Kadayamma would feed the chickens paddy from our storeroom, and they would gather around her, clucking happily, knowing she was their friend.
But it was not just practical skills she taught me. It was character.
When I was about seven, a street kid confronted me, asking if I was making a face at him. My two big front teeth hulked out slightly, and combined with my permanent smile, I must have looked odd to him. Kadayamma heard the exchange and quickly came to my rescue. Soon after, my father took me to an orthodontic dentist — a relatively new speciality in Sri Lanka then — and paid 200 rupees for braces, half his monthly salary. That was the kind of family I came from: poor by some standards, but willing to sacrifice everything for their children’s wellbeing and dignity.
Kadayamma told me stories of how they extracted teeth in her generation. A family member would tie a strong string around the damaged tooth, attach the other end to a door handle, then slam the door. No anesthetics. Just pain, tearing gums, and desperate hope that the suffering would end. When I was seven, one of my grandaunts died from complications following a tooth extraction.
Kadayamma defended me that day with my teeth, but she herself had no front teeth. She was younger than I am now when she stood up for me. That contrast — between her sacrifices and my inherited advantages — has never left me. I am a beneficiary of advances in science, of parental sacrifice, of grandmothers who gave everything so their grandchildren could have better.
She had a peculiar habit of disparaging her own people. “සින්හලයා මෝඩයා,” she would declare — “These Sinhalese fools.” Looking back through the long lens of years, I understand so little of what she meant. My father offered his own metaphor: “Sinhalese are like frogs in the well.” We had a well in our courtyard, cool and dark and mysterious. That image stuck with me — the comfort of the familiar, the danger of never looking beyond our immediate surroundings.
Chapter 3: Maama — The Distant Uncle
Not all family stories are warm. Some reveal the complexity of human nature, the ways family can both support and fail us.
Maama — my uncle, my mother’s only elder brother — was named Manchanayake Mudalige John Chrysostom Jayawardane, though everyone called him Christie. When my grandfather Lewis died, Maama was thirty years old, and my aunt Catherine was twenty-two. Both were single.
As the eldest male in the family, Maama should have become the new head of the household. But he did not move back into the family home in Eldeniya. This left my young aunt living alone in the ancestral house during the workweek. My mother, displaying the natural leadership that would define her, invited both Maama and Catherine to relocate to our home.
In Asian societies, the eldest son receives preferential treatment by default. Maama occupied the front room of our house, coming home only on weekends. When he was there, he never talked to me or my little sister. He did not play with us. He never bought us a toy, a book, or sweets — unlike my aunt, grandmother, and other relatives who were generous and loving.
When he was home, he kept his door locked to prevent us kids from entering. I had no connection with him. Love is a two-way street, even for a child of seven. I had no affinity with him and his bizarre ways. He preferred solitude, emerging from his room only for washing and meals. What was he doing in there? The kid in me was curious, but the answer never came.
Then came the crisis with my maternal grandmother, Euphracia. After years in the asylum, she was deemed well enough to leave. Maama, as the eldest in the family, should have taken responsibility for his aging mother. He hesitated. He vacillated. He did nothing.
Once again, my mother stepped forward. She brought her mother home from the asylum — temporarily, she thought, until Maama could organise permanent care.
But over a short period, my grandmother’s mental illness returned with force. She yelled at everyone with expletives, even us children. To complicate matters, my father was transferred to a remote town on a promotion around this same time. It fell to my mother alone to manage a household with three children and a mentally ill mother. My sane grandmother, Kadayamma, was her sole supporter.
Two years passed. Maama never kept his promise to make permanent arrangements for his mother’s care, despite having the financial capacity to do so. The expletives, the arrogance, the savagery from our sick grandmother became too much for an eleven-year-old boy to bear. I no longer wanted to live at home. I was so sick of the drama that I entered a Christian Brothers boarding school — my unintended escape from the mayhem.
For the next four years, I was away, returning home only during school holidays. Now, looking back, I wish I had not abandoned my mother in her time of need. My father was working far away, coming home only on weekends. My mother had my siblings to care for, plus her mother playing havoc with mental illness.
Maama’s failure to lead, to take responsibility, to care — it shaped our family in ways both visible and invisible. It forced my mother to be stronger than she should have had to be. It showed me that being the eldest, being the man, was not automatic — it was a choice, a responsibility, a calling that some answered and some refused.
Part II: Building a Life
Chapter 4: The Games We Played
Despite the hardships, my childhood held joy. My parents did not give us traditional toys, cars, or dolls. Instead, they introduced games that had far-reaching creative and practical value. I grew up in a house with board games — Ludo, Snakes and Ladders, Adam’s Peak Climb, and a Safari game.
I was the eldest, with a sister four years younger and a kid brother eight years younger. These board games were easy to play with a single dice, and we played almost every day in the afternoons, often until sunset. The images of those original sets are still with me — the worn boards, the simple colored pieces, the dice that tumbled across our floor while monsoon rains hammered the roof.
Then my father brought home a chess set. I loved the wooden box with its chess pieces — kings, rooks, bishops, queens, knights, and pawns. My father sat me down and explained the rules. They were complicated, with different movements for each piece, but I was captivated. That chess set became a family treasure, now held by my brother in Winnipeg, Canada, carrying memories across oceans and decades.
These were not expensive gifts, but they were intentional. My parents understood that play could teach strategy, patience, turn-taking, winning and losing with grace. They invested in our minds and characters, not just our entertainment.
Chapter 5: My Name Is Denzil
Iam the firstborn to my parents. I’m not sure exactly why I was named Denzil, but they must have been proud, because our family home was also named “Denzil.” A bold nameplate was affixed to the front of our home bearing my name — a statement of hope, of expectation, of love.
I am proud of my name. It stands out wherever I go. It is my unique identity, my personal brand. I never wanted a different name, though as a teenager I sometimes imagined myself as “Denny.” I had many nicknames — Denny, Danny, Deniya, Denza, Denzy — but I loved Denny the most.
My middle name is Bernard, my saint’s name. In the 1950s in Sri Lanka, Catholic newborns were baptised within a week, and a saint’s name was mandatory. Bernard became part of my identity, linking me to a tradition, a faith, a community that stretched back centuries.
Names matter. They carry expectations, hopes, identities. When my own children were born, I thought carefully about their names, what they would mean, how they would sound, what doors they might open or close. A name is the first gift parents give, and it lasts a lifetime.
Chapter 6: Dubai and the First House
Even before I started shaving, I got my big break: a job in booming Dubai. Suddenly, I was earning thousands of dollars — a fortune for a young man from Sri Lanka. My father, a great modeler of his children, knew my money was best spent on something lasting: a new house.
He called me and my kid brother together and discussed his plan. Then, my maternal grandmother’s land in Dalugama was directly written to me, bypassing a generation of ownership. I had no notion of real estate’s value. My family had small parcels of land and houses everywhere — my parents and grandparents owned them, but nobody talked about them much. They were just there, items on the sidelines of our family’s value system.
But my father saw the opportunity. With my Dubai earnings and the family land, I could build something permanent, something that would outlast me. And so, barely into my twenties, I became a homeowner.
Building that house felt like building a future. Every brick laid, every wall raised, every room finished — they were declarations that I would not just pass through life, but would leave something behind. That house stood on land my grandmother had walked, land my grandfather had worked, land that had nourished our family for generations.
Part III: A New Country, A New Generation
Chapter 7: Migration to Australia
From Dubai, I moved to Australia with a young family. My children — Natasha, Roshin, Durand, and Roanna — grew up not in the Sri Lanka of my childhood, but in Sydney, with its beaches and skyscrapers, its multicultural streets and English-language schools.
This was their country now. My heritage spans three generations in our adopted home. My experiences growing up in the 1960s and 1970s in Sri Lanka were unique, as were my early experiences in Dubai as a young man discovering the world. But my children’s experiences are Australian — shaped by different landscapes, different opportunities, different challenges.
I have a deep desire to write about my grandparents and their stories so that my children and their descendants will know their ancestors’ experiences and life journeys. This memoir is that effort — a bridge between worlds, between generations, between the past and the future.
Chapter 8: Letters from a Twelve-Year-Old
In1998, my eldest daughter Natasha wrote a letter that I have treasured ever since. She was twelve years old, bursting with life and gratitude:
“You are the best parents anyone could ever have. Without you, I wouldn’t be here to write this letter. You kept promises which were hard to fulfill. Thank you for being there for me in the hard times… You moved to Australia for our sake and worked hard for the things we needed. You bought things for us with your pocket money and any other money you could scrape around… You helped me with hard homework and helped me pass selective (You owe me remember!)”
She passed the selective school test — a rigorous exam where only one in five children succeed, out of 1,500 participants. She was growing up, absorbing both cultures. At the end of her letter, she wrote: “I know this is too much to ask but do you think for Christmas can you get me a Sinhalese dictionary? If you can’t get one, don’t worry. I’ll still be happy.”
A Sinhalese dictionary. My daughter, growing up in Australia, wanting to maintain a connection to her heritage, to the language her grandparents spoke, to the stories I tell. That request broke my heart and filled it simultaneously.
Chapter 9: The Heart of Memory
Years later, when my youngest daughter Roanna prepared for her wedding, our family gathered around her in our Hampton-style house. The scent of Iceland poppies drifted through the passage — a fragrance that had marked every spring of her childhood.
She stood before the white-framed mirror in her wedding gown while her nieces and nephews — little echoes of their parents’ childhood selves — circled her like butterflies. I entered, and she recognized my footsteps, the soft shuffle of my boots, the distinctive tap of my hat. That sound transported her back to Sunday mornings, to book readings, to quiet moments shared.
I presented her with a gift — a delicate gold bracelet personalized with letters: J for Jayasinghe, R for Roshin (her brother), a heart shape from Durand (her brother), and an opal from Natasha (her sister). But the most meaningful element was the gold itself.
“The gold of this bracelet is made from your father’s wedding ring — the one I wore when I made my vows,” I told her. “Every time you wear it, you wear your family’s story.”
Natasha added, “This is a combined family gift of the Jayasinghe clan.”
As Roanna fastened it around her wrist, the metal still held the warmth of our hands. In that moment, I saw the continuation of everything my grandparents had begun — the courage of Lewis, the resilience of Barbara, the sacrifices of Euphracia and Kadayamma, the hopes and dreams of generations flowing forward into new lives, new families, new stories yet to be written.
Later, stealing one final moment alone, Roanna caught her reflection in the mirror. The gold pieces winked in the light, carrying the weight of bedtime stories, family dinners, holidays in Sri Lanka, Christmas mornings. She touched each one in turn — each a chapter in our shared story — and smiled, knowing she carried not just gold, but the heart of her family’s history into her new beginning.
Part IV: Reflections
Chapter 10: What I’ve Learned
Iam now older than my grandparents were when they faced their greatest trials. I have lived on three continents. I have built houses and careers. I have raised four children who are now raising children of their own. And what have I learned?
Family is not perfect. Maama failed his mother and sister. Mental illness tore through our family like a storm. We had conflicts, disappointments, broken promises. But we also had Kadayamma teaching me to shred coconuts, my father sacrificing half his salary for my braces, my mother stepping forward when others stepped back.
Courage is not dramatic. It is Lewis visiting his wife in an asylum for decades. It is Barbara opening a shop to feed her son. It is my mother managing a household with a mentally ill mother while her husband worked hours away. It is quiet, daily, unglamorous persistence.
Stories matter. When I hold that brass bell or those copper measuring cups, I am holding more than objects. I am holding the hands that touched them, the lives that surrounded them, the hopes they represented. Without stories, these are just old things. With stories, they are bridges across time.
Heritage is a gift and a responsibility. My children are Australian, but they carry Sri Lankan blood, family stories that stretch back to colonial Ceylon. It is my responsibility to pass these stories forward, so they know where they came from, what their ancestors endured, what values they inherited.
Migration is both loss and gain. I miss the Sri Lanka of my childhood — the monsoon rains, the smell of curry cooking, the sound of Sinhala in the streets. But I gained opportunities I never would have had, and my children have gained even more. Every choice involves loss. Every gain requires sacrifice.
Chapter 11: For My Children and Grandchildren
When I am gone, you will inherit these heirlooms — the brass bell, the jewellery casket, the measuring tapes, the chess set, the copper cups. But I hope you will inherit more than things. I hope you will inherit:
- The courage of Lewis, who faced impossible choices and made them with grace.
- The resilience of Barbara, who refused to be defeated by widowhood or poverty.
- The leadership of Susan, my mother, who stepped forward when others stepped back.
- The generosity of Kadayamma, who gave her love freely and taught me to respect all living things. Kadayamma and Barbara are the same.
- The faith of our ancestors, who knelt every evening to pray, who believed in something larger than themselves.
You will face challenges I cannot imagine. The world is changing faster than any previous generation experienced. But these values — courage, resilience, leadership, generosity, faith — they do not change. They are not outdated. They are the foundation upon which you can build whatever life you choose.
When you look at your children and grandchildren, remember that you are not just raising individuals. You are continuing a story that began in a small village in Ceylon in the 1890s, that survived colonialism and war and mental illness and migration, that crossed oceans and built new lives in new lands.
You are Jayasinghes. You carry the blood of shopkeepers and school principals, of widows who became entrepreneurs, of mothers who sacrificed everything, of fathers who taught by example, of grandmothers who defended you with their last breaths.
Carry that proudly. Carry it with humility. Carry it forward.
Epilogue: The Gold of Memory
Mywedding ring became Roanna’s bracelet. The houses my grandparents built are now occupied by others. The ancestral land has been subdivided and sold. But the stories remain.
Every time Roanna wears that bracelet, she wears our family’s story. Every time my grandchildren ask about the brass bell or the copper cups, they learn about Barbara and Lewis. Every time I tell these stories, I am weaving a thread between past and future, between Ceylon and Australia, between what was and what will be.
This is the gold of memory — not precious metal, but precious meaning. This is the inheritance that matters most — not property or possessions, but identity and values.
I am Denzil Bernard Jayasinghe, son of Don Thomas and Mary Susan, grandson of Barbara and Joranis, grandson of Lewis and Euphracia, great-grandson of names that stretch back into the mists of colonial Ceylon. I am a link in a chain that connects the past to the future.
And so are you.
Remember these stories. Tell them to your children. Add your own stories to them. Keep the chain unbroken.
This is how we defeat death — not by living forever, but by being remembered, by passing forward what matters, by ensuring that those who come after us know who came before.
This is my memoir. This is our story. This is the legacy of the Jayasinghe family.
May it endure.
Written in Sydney, Australia, 2025 From the stories and memories of Denzil Jayasinghe For all the generations past, present, and future
Written by Denzil Jayasinghe
Lifelong learner, tech enthusiast, photographer, occasional artist, servant leader, avid reader, storyteller and more recently a budding writer
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