Family bids tearful adieu to Lorna Varona

Manila: Family members bid a heart-wrenching goodbye to Lorna Varona during her interment at suburban Paranaque’s Manila Memorial Park on Sunday, 44 days after she was murdered.

Pablo Varona, 65, her husband, said, “She’s now at peace. The tragedy will not erase what she meant to us. The tragedy has made my family stronger.”

“My mom’s burial in the Philippines is like a homecoming. It’s a good closure for all of us,” Lorna’s eldest daughter Maria Lourdes said, adding it was a long journey with many tragic stages.

The burial occurred almost 40 days after investigators found Lorna’s body stuffed into the boot of her green Jaguar in an industrial area in Sharjah on August 31.

“She prepared us to be independent. We’re thankful for that,” Maria, 29, said.

“Her legacy will always be with us. The family bond will not change,” her son Joseph Louise, 26, said.

‘At peace’

“My mother is now at peace,” another son Joseph Luke, 27, said.

“I’ll try to move on,” Lorna’s daughter Maria Liza, 24, who could not stop crying, said. “I really loved her very much. We were always together for the past four years.”

Lorna’s sister Lolit, a dentist in Sharjah, said, “She helped us a lot, It is lamentable that we were not there for her when she needed us most.”

Meanwhile, Lorna’s brother Joseph “Jesse” Lim VII talked of how he had donated a kidney to Lorna to prolong her life.

He said he was still angry at the suspected killer. “When I donated my left kidney to my sister in an operation in the Philippines in 2000, it was to prolong her life, and to pay for what she had done for us.

“Her killer just erased her from us,” Jesse, also Dubai-based since his sister established her bakery in the ’80s, said.

Relatives fly in

Lorna’s six siblings, four of whom are based in the United States, arrived in the Philippines for the wake at Funeraria Paz in Sucat, which began on October 2.

Lorna’s two daughters, Maria Lourdes and Maria Liza, will return to Dubai on Thursday. The eldest will take over the management of the four companies established by Lorna.

Pablo was grateful for the support the family has received since Lorna’s death. “My family was overwhelmed with the support given to us by Dubai-based friends, relatives and my office, including people we did not even know, at the start of the tragedy.” “Moving on is hard,” he added.