An end

My father passed away on June 8. He was almost 71. He has been ill for the past ten years, and bedridd for the past three years and a half. In this last period, he could only move his left hand. Even so my mother and I were not entirely ready to let him go. I suppose one never is. He did not imagine he would not recover after his last major stroke, but every step forward was marred by several steps back, which took him closer and closer to the end. His favourite adage was "while there is life, there is hope". He had lost all extra weight and his constants looked good, but the lack of movement and the lack of ability to move slowly destroyed every part of his body.

He was optimistic until the last year when he lost hope that he'll ever get well again. Yet, somehow, he found the strength to keep going when all the pain seemed pointless even to him. After I accepted the job in Barcelona, he'd ask "when do we go to Spain?". He was impatient for change, which could not really be provived in bed. He'd call friends and relatives and persistently ask them to visit. Only two did visit in the years he was ill. Whenever I'd ask him if he wanted to go outside, his face would light up. So, I'd lift him together with my mom and one of the kids would push the wheelchair under him. At first, we'd go on the street. He wanted to vaccinate from COVID-19 early and even thought that vaccines should be tested on people like him. They kept announcing on the radio that elederly people could vaccinate, but there was no mobile team in Lugoj. So when we'd go on the street, he'd scream "vaccination". Eventually, we drove to the vaccination center, and convinced the doctors to come to the car and vaccinate him. They said it was not legal, but agreed to do it. Like almost everything my father did, it opened an unorthodox path. They have been doing vaccinations in the car since then for people in similar conditions.

In the last few weeks, he gave up trying to change the world, and preferred to stay in the yard and watch the children play and pet the kittens who'd climb on him or the dog and the goat as they walked by his chair. The only day he did not want to go outside was the day he died. Then I asked him if he'd make it until Mihai would come on June 15, and he said "I don't know". Our last last conversation was a joke "Chiar si magarul lui Itic a murit cand n-a mai mancat nimic" ("Even Itic's donkey died when he ate nothing".) The original joke is longer and involves Itic training his donkey to be economical, and complaining that when he succeeded and the donkey ate nothing, he died. My father did manage to eat until the last day -- mostly fruits and yogurt. My mother tried to make him breathe better with various medication, and in the last afternoon, when it was clear nothing worked, she held him and told him they'd meet on the other side. He died in her arms while she was calling him "my dearest darling". After that she had trouble letting him go for the next two hours until the funeral home came. When they placed him in the coffin, his spine was so bent that they needed a bunch of empty bottles to make it seem straight. He had managed to live until all resources were exhausted and life held mostly pain. Mihai did show up the morning of the funeral. He flew through Cluj, and then took an overnight train to make it in time. His cousin, Cornel, also drove from Bucharest to be there. He would have been pleased to see both of them -- their presence helped us get through the day.

My father was buried on June 10, on the day that Romania commemorates its heroes, i.e., those who died while serving their country. Since he had been a colonel in the army, he had the right to a military funeral. So, his colleagues from Lugoj came to the funeral with armed personnel. Their commander was a woman. My father would have been pleased by that. They put a flag on the coffin and gave my mother a flag to take home that commemorates his service in the military and 50 lei instead of a wreath (it's better for the environment). Then there was a speach about my father's career, and as the coffin was being lowered into the grave, they shot blanks.

If I could, I would like to forget most of the last three and a half years. I want to remember my father as I knew him when I was growing up. He was the man who could lift me, Mihai and my mom up all at once. He had boundless energy and often could not sit still. He'd say (Daca stam ne sta norocul) "if we stop to sit down, our luck lays down with us". He was always reparing something, always planning something to do. When unsavoury characters would ask me for my phone number, I would give them his number, and say my father is a doctor at the military hospital. Then I'd mention they could reach me through him whenever they wanted. None of them ever called him. Even after I came home from Switzerland, when I felt threatened I mentioned my father and his career in the military. As a doctor in triage at the military hospital, he evaluated police, other military doctors and even aviation personnel. They all knew and respected him. He was known for never giving a wrong diagnosis, and for going out of his way to help when there was a problem. On their last inspection from Bucharest, the colonel inspecting the hospital mentioned he felt out of sorts. He thought his stomac was upset. My father diagnosed him with a stroke, did the EKG, and went in the ambulance with him until he got to the point where he received adequate treatment.

When my father was ill, our family doctor helped with paperwork as well as medication. My father needed the address on his ID updated every year. A person in charge would come to bring it home as a personnal favour. My father was grateful, but would also later say to me that all handicaped people should be helped with their paperwork as a norm -- not just those who had once had fancy careers -- and that the paperwork should be simplified and automated. It never was, but, perhaps, it will be some day. We had trouble finding people to help with the caretaking beyond the therapist who was retired and who came for an hour or two a day -- just not Sunday, and very few people asked how my father was doing until he was gone.

His life is perhaps best summarized in his own words. So, I am listing all his previous posts below.

Tickets to the other world
Another house, another story
Defeating Dr. Death. A house, but not a home.
Batles lost and batles won.
The most efficient prison
The Beginning and the end
A version of Snow White
The Thief who saved my life
An Opinion from near the grave

Tickets to the other world

 I have two tickets which are getting me there:

1. The major stroke that is deepening towards the bulb, which I've had in January 2018. I have not been able to swallow things properly for a year and it's getting worse.

2. The foot infection which can't be stopped because of 1. It occurred, in part, due to not enough movement and bad circulation.

As a doctor I was best at giving advice. I did not pay attention to it myself, but I gave good advice, and people who listened to me did well and got well. So, I'll do this to the end.

Don't drink alcohol. My wife and daughter mostly drank warm water. I thought it was silly, but water is a good drink. It can, generally, be gotten from the tap. Natural fruit juices should be drank only occasionally because they have too much fast sugar for regularity. Don't smoke. Don't do drugs -- even coffee is not a good idea if you can avoid it. Use devices, don't let them use you. Don't play computer games. Don't watch movies often. Don't waste time on the internet -- this includes social media and whatever else will come after it. Don't overeat. When in season, overeat fruits and vegetables that grow in your area. They don't count as overeating. When you do the "don'ts" make sure they don't become a regular occurrence. The world will keep trying to get you to do the "don'ts" to an extent that is abusing to youself and to others because that is "cool". They are a way to pain, a way to loss and a way to premature tickets. They are a way for other people to take what you have in exchange of a fake and oversold form of happiness.

This is a message for my grandchildren. I had to preach. It's what grandparents, and what doctors do. I am both. I want you to remember that I love you. I love those of you I have met, those of you whom I have helped raise, and I love those of you I haven't met. I'll continue to love you from beyond.

I am not sorry for those of you who have not met me in this state. I drool a lot. Most people no longer understand me. I am mostly gone. I can still return when somebody enters the room, but it won't be for long. When one loses their ability to move, it's terminal. For those of you whom I have met, and have helped me, I hope it had taught you to not do what I did, and to care and be kind to those in need.

I want you to strive to love yourselves -- always -- and then you'll have the strength to love those around you.  Love gives boundless strength and helps you deal with whatever comes. And to forgive yourselves, forgive those around you, and forgive me and forgive your father for not being there for you and for not doing more. I've forgiven my son for not beeing there for me in my final years and I hope you will forgive him too even though you have more to forgive. I have one message for him from near the grave: "shave!", a long beard is dirty and might even get you arrested some day. Even though Mihai is not here, I feel I can almost see him and I still love him with my whole heart. I can still see an incubator with a tiny baby that almost burnt as I kept virgil, and I am so thankful that he made it to almost 42 and that I had the chance to watch him grow into a man.

I'd also like my grandchildren to know each other and built a strong network of strong, kind people. This might be harder than you think, but I do believe you'll find you have things in common, and that you will do amazing things together as you grow.

I am the past. My motto has been "while there is life, there is hope". However, in these three years and a half there was no hope. My health only got from bad to worse. It did not matter what I did or what my family did. I still hear my wife calling me "dearest darling" as she goes by. I am sorry for not doing more for her, for my children, and for you. I am finally able to exit this nightmare that seemed to never end. My body is distorted and in pain. It was magnificient once. I won't miss what it has become. You are the future. Once you are a bit older, try to get to know each other and to help each other when you can. There is power in numbers and in kindness. Those who are related are alike and can help each other more efficiently than strangers.

Another House, Another Story.

 It was 1996. I was 46 years old. My children were already high school, and kept dreaming of living in a house with a garden. The house I was building was not going to be finished any time soon. It was too large.  But I wasn't the kind of person who'd alter plans.  I had a strong personality -- in other words, I was difficult to live with. I had a way of annihilating my family verbally -- whether I was right or wrong -- and I was drinking and eating too much for my own good. So, it became a mathematical impossibility for a person to live with me full time. My wife sold the apartment they were living in to buy a house. 

We saw a number of houses -- this time by car because my wife owned the car.  I mostly gave up driving after that. She'd take me to the places I did not want to or could not walk to. My car simply froze in place until I sold it for scrap metal many years later.

On a dirt road, the last one before the city ended, we found a tiny house with a large garden. It was owned by an old couple. They were younger than I am today. Yet they seemed so very old at the time. He was bent at close to a straight angle. His nose was almost touching the ground. She was selling flowers at street corners to make ends meet. They had to sell the home they had built and raised their two sons in because the oldest son had taken a loan with a money lender, where he had placed his parents' home as a co-lateral. He took the loan without paying attention to the interest in order to buy floor tiles and faince for his apartment, and less than a year later, when the loan reached the value of the house it had to be sold. The house was already on the name of the money lenders. The old couple asked for twice the amount owned -- 16,000 Deutsche Mark. We had sold our apartment for 13,750 Deutsche Mark. My wife and I pulled together all our savings to reach the full amount so that I could offer them exactly what they asked for. We met with both parties at the notary. The money lender asked for all the money, but I asked them to write how much they were owned, and made sure they got only that, and that the old couple received their share. Had they sold the house to anyone else, they would have lost everything. With the money, they bought an apartment in a shared yard, which was central and ended up being more valuable than the house. She continued to sell flowers and strawberries. We'd sometimes meet her at street corners. Within five years or so they were both gone. I'd like to think I made their final years less painful than they would have been had they not met me.

We demolished their kitchen, and built a house of the same size with a ground floor and a finished attic. By the time we started building the house, it was 1998. My children were sick of basements. My basement wasn't finished yet. They wanted to prove a house can be built in under a year. My wife found two capable men from Maramures who built the house in a few months. It had two rooms and a bathroom: one room on the ground floor and one in a finished attic. My children were fighting over the room in the attic. In the end, Mihai received an Erasmus scholarship to go to Germany in 1999 -- just as the house was finished. Ruxandra lived there with my wife and mother in law for a year before she too went to college and graduate school in the US. At that point my salary had reached $400 a month. It was considered large. When Ruxandra left for college in 2001, I gave her all my savings. I had gathered $4000 in four years. My wife paid the plane ticket. It was $500. Ruxandra used the money to pay for tuition at Parkland college. One semester was $3600. This was the first and only tuition bill I paid for. With the other $400 she paid the rent to a small room. It was $200 a month.

My children had both talent and the ability to work hard in whichever direction they tried to go in. At first, they both chose astrophysics. They did well in school and, eventually, they both received full scholarships to go to college, and later fellowships to attend graduate school. They did not need more money from me or from their mother after their first year. They both chose to work and support themselves. As empty nesters, my wife and I finished our two houses. Eventually, street plumbing was installed. The city even paved the roads. She built seven bathrooms in hers. Each bathroom has a room and tiny kitchen attached to it. I built four bathrooms in my house. Now that the pandemic is almost over, we hope to rent them to help make ends meet. While my end is close, my children's life story still has plenty of parts left unwritten.

Defeating Dr. Death. A house, but not a home

 Since I remember I wanted to build a house. Many children have this dream and play house. So I suppose it's not unusual. However, the impossibility of it only made the dream dearer to me. During the communist period houses were treated like churches: they were demolished, and replaced by apartment buildings. My parents' home was one of the last houses to be demolished just before the Romanian revolution in 1989. The house that I still dream myself in was replaced by a parking lot.  

After I moved to Timisoara in 1988, I was going to be given an apartment from work. The apartment building was unfinished. I remember visiting it with my children, and dreaming we will live there. Then the laws changed. By 1991, I gathered my savings, sold our two cars, and prepared to buy a house for my family. I was 41 years old and still believed I and everyone I loved would live forever. I thought I had time. I saw all houses on sale by foot. I was armed with a map, and with a lot of ideals. I rejected proprieties for facing north, for being draughty and old, for having sandy soil, and for plenty of other reasons that don't make sense to me today. Then I found this house on a dirt street that seemed worse than most others. There was no plumbing, but it was close to work. It was also surrounded by gypsies, who were terrorising the old couple who had built it. The other neighbor was Dr. Death. He had an interest in the property, too, and worked together with the gypsies to get the property for 70,000 lei.

The gypsies beat up the old lady. She died two weeks later. Their daughter was desperate to sell the property, and, of course, the only people who would have had the courage to buy it were either the gypsies themselves, who would not have paid much for it, or Dr. Death who offered the 70,000. That was true until I showed up. 

I misguidedly liked to play the knight in shinning armor. I bought the house for exactly the amount they asked for -- almost 250 000 lei.  House prices in Timisoara varied between 70 000 lei (the price of a new car) to ten times the price of a new car. The market is similar today. The 70 000 lei usually implied one was buying a ruin. This house had 4 big rooms, and a nice garden. All my other considerations flew out the window once I decided to buy it.  I reconciled with my ideals by saying I was going to demolish it and build my dream house. It was going to have four levels: a basement, a ground floor where my wife and I would have our medical cabinet, a first floor with plenty of space for us, our children, and each set of parents when they wished to visit, and a finished attic. 

I moved from the apartment I shared with my family to the old structure. I bought lots of books that explained how to build a house and plenty of tools. I made friends with the few neighbors who had no interest in the house. The lady next door had a big German Shepard. His name was Rembo. She'd let me use her entrance, and I brought plenty of food for her dog, who adored me. I hired an architect, and had the plan drawn and re-drawn until I was happy with it.

At first, the neighbors thought they would scare me away. The grandfather gypsy had served an 11 months prison sentence for murder. They had killed a young officer. The sentence was light because the gradfather was old and suffered from tuberculosis. Next to them was Rembo and his lady, and after them there was Dr. Death. He was the coroner who had been named so by the mob for sending Timisoara's dead from the 1989 revolution to be burned in Bucharest. It was rumored that young men and women entered the County hospital shot in the arm or in some other non-life-threatening location, and were later sent to the crematory in Bucharest with a bullet to the head. They said he personally got the job done in some cases -- perhaps if the person reached him alive. However, staff who tried to testify against him were later found dead, not shot, just held down until they drowned in rain puddles. This was because Romania's leadership did not really change after 1989 and those involved in the cover-up were too strong to be found guilty. Some gypsy clans sometimes worked together with the police and with people like Dr Death and got the right kind of jobs done. They survived and sometimes even thrived.

At work I tried to be fair. I have never asked for bribes, and supported my staff. As a doctor in triage, I tried to make sure all those in my department had the maximum salary they were allowed to get. Most of my staff was formed from women, and I made sure they were promoted. My job was to find what was wrong with people as quickly as possible and to send them to the right department to get cured. I did that to the best of my ability for all the years I was in service. As a colonel and an officer, I hanged out with the soldiers and sub-officers, and ignored my superiors to the best of my ability. My inferiors loved me, and my superiors thought I was mad. I'd often make jokes, and I was known for remarks of the form "sa moara comandantul daca nu-i adevarat" (let my commander die if I am wrong) made sometimes while kneeling perferably in front of the painting made by my sister with the skull and the bones. I now believe that it was a combination of the devotion of the many people I had helped that kept me alive combined with luck and madness and fear or lack of fear. I also had a strong presence and a way of convincing the masses. They were right: I was mad since I don't remember being afraid of anything or anyone while they were afraid of death, and after the revolution they were afraid of paying for what they had done. None paid in this life since there seems to be an endless interest in this world in promoting the corrupt because they do what they are told and can be led easily. I'll find out soon enough what's after death.

When I was outside work, I'd hang out with Rembo while working on my new building. My neighbors would play various tricks on me. I'd often find my gate wide open, and in the middle of the path, there would be trash or shit. I mostly ignored them and entered my house via Rembo's territory to avoid seeing them. One day I told them to give up on their tricks and that if they don't I'll break their gate and put their trash inside. Later that evening I found myself surrounded by gypsies holding various garden implements. They told me they wanted me to leave their street or die. Another year in prison for the old man was not much hardship. So they declared they wanted to beat me to death like they did the young officer. I had an ax nearby. I had used it to cut fire wood. I brandished it around and told them that, yes, I was outnumbered, and if they tried they could beat me up and kill me, but I was not going to go down quietly. At least five of them would go down with me. So, I asked "who is ready to die? who will go down with me? which five of you?". Rembo joined me. He was growling and his fur was raised. He looked like a porcupine or like a wolf ready to strike in my defence. They were armed and willing to use their weapons, but I was much taller than most of them. They did hit me a few times. I hit nobody, but cursed them to the best of my ability and brandished the ax a lot while Rembo growled. I was full of bruises when my wife came that evening, but at the end of the day they had given up and accepted me as a neighbour. I told them to swear on the sharpness of the ax that they will cause no more trouble, and promised I'll rescind my curses in turn. They kept their word for the many years that followed. We formed a strange kind of friendship. We'd always say hello when we'd meet. I'd bring medication for them when they were ill. I even tried curing their grandfather from tuberculosis. He mostly chose to give the medication I provided to their pigs. It would make them fat, and they could eat them faster. He'd chew tabacco instead to cure his cough.

In time the gypsies lost their house. A dentist bought it. He eventually sold out too; as did the son of the lady next door after she died at the age of 91. The new owner demolished it. Now it's an empty lot (somebody will likely build another tall building on it. What the area needs is a parking structure and more trees.) Dr Death has died of old age some years before me. He left behind two children just like me. Only I also have grandchildren. He has some of the present through his children, I have more of the future through my grandchildren.

Other gypsies moved on the street. They are much richer. They no longer keep pigs or any other kind of animal. They have a huge mansion that looks like a palace. Part of it is rented to a furniture store. Scumpi (the Expensive one; the name of my neighbor) has a blond, beautiful wife who looks younger than my daughter. He had shown me his scar from an open heart surgery and told me it was performed when he was in prison abroad. I showed him my scar. I had an open heart surgery the year Edward was born, only mine was performed in Timisoara.

It took me 30 years to finish the house. For many years, most of what my wife and I earned went into either paying workers or building materials. My children went to school abroad. They studied hard and obtained fellowships, and even sent money home. Now the house is built. My parents and my in-laws have been dead for many years. I have never opened a medical cabinet. At 67 I had a major stroke from which I have not recovered. Since then the damage deepened and is getting closer and closer to the bulb. I am 70 now and I am heading towards the other realm.

I built a house. It was never a home, but perhaps it will be some day. It has not been a medical cabinet either. It might still be one day.

Ira George, my grandson who is 10 months old, was born in one of the bathrooms I designed. The hospitals were closed due to a case of COVID-19, and my daugther chose not to go and give birth in a tent because she wanted to breast-feed. The rule was that they would take the child away until their COVID-19 test came back negative, which would take days. Instead, she gave birth in the bathtub, while my wife, a retired gynecologist, led the delivery. He is one of the proofs that life moves on independently of the many mistakes we make. However, my daughter chose not to live in the house I built. It's too big and too central she says. She is trying to rent it instead. She moved into her grandparents' former house, which has always been a home to her, and is now preparing to leave yet again.

I hope the world will head towards economic recovery, and stop the lockdowns, and that we'll fight for sanity and not for some crazy new normal. Lockdowns are not compatible with democracy. They damage mental health and well-being. I won't live to see "the new normal" (I hear too much about it on the radio as it is), but I'd like to know my children and my grandchildren are safe and free.

My daughter points out I should not have my story harm minorities. I simply stated things as I remember them. I have had many gypsy friends throughout the years, and some of my daugther's best friends were of gypsy origin. Her best friend in grade school was Alina Litra -- a little girl who welcomed the friendship of lonely a child that had no friends because she had changed three schools in fewer years. Our best neighbor -- the only one who opens our door regularly -- since I've been sick is an old gypsy lady, who even wears the flowing skirt atire. Her extended family owns many houses in Lugoj. While her grandchildren and great-grand children are abroad she maintains the houses, and finds the time to befriend us. Here we have no Dr. Death nearby. However, the house next door used to be owned by Mr. Devil. The nickname arised from his connections with the special police. I don't know the details of his actions, since I never wanted to find out. I've heard enough about injustice. His grandson owns the house now. He works at the Town Hall. He likely is involved with the new order. I heard him the other day discussing with the gypsy neighbor under my window. They said something about returning from Germany because somebody hanged themselves or had to hang themselves. I did not understand the details. However, it seems that the street still is a safe place to discuss things, and that the old and the new orders are not as different as I hoped. Also, Western Europe is not a safe place we'd like to think it is...

I have, however, drifted from my title. I now think people should build homes, and be there for their children and significant others because life is finite. The world needs kinder people, fewer heroes, fewer houses, and more homes.