Some fragments of my mother’s life.
And our shared memories.
She was the best mother, but then so are all mothers…
She was born into a working-class family in Borovnica, Slovenia. I remember how happy she was when I once gave her a framed print of the famous Borovnica railway bridge, which was then considered the longest stone bridge in Europe. As a child, she admired it every day. Her father worked on this bridge as a maintenance worker.
Just before the Second World War, her family moved to Rakek, which was then a small town right on the Italian-Yugoslavian border.
They were not rich, rather poor. My mother often told me how her mother secretly cut her a thin slice of bread. She was the youngest child and her mother’s favorite.
At school, she sat with a girl from a rich family. She always had white bread for lunch. And as often happens, this girl thought brown bread was better, and so she and my mother traded. She gave my mother white bread, and my mother gave her hers.
Then came the war, terrible as all wars. Her town was taken by the Italians, and in 1943 the German army arrived.
She once told how in the summer of 1944 she stood in front of the house and watched the squadrons of planes flying towards Germany. A German plane appeared from somewhere and was shot down. She never knew what told her to take a step back. The next moment, a piece of iron fell to the place where she had been standing just a second before and stuck itself in the ground in front of her.
After the war, she got a job on the railway. She worked, as they said at the time, on the reconstruction of the homeland.
One day, a new boss appeared. Once he passed the workers on the rail line and asked which one girl knew how to do arithmetic. My mother said that she did. So he asked her to come to his office the next morning.
And so began a happy, unhappy, and then happy-again love story. Why unhappy? My mother didn’t like my father at first. And he accepted a job in Sarajevo, Bosnia, disappointed. After three months, he came back still unhappy. And my mother softened. Just before her mother died, she told her, stick with him, he’s a good man. And they got married and were married for sixty-six years.
And so it went on for years. We lived in Celje since 1960.
I remember my mother once spanked me on the ass with a wooden spatula. As a child, I was stubborn and didn’t want to cry. Which made my mother even angrier, so I got a few more punches. Today I know that it hurt her more than it did me.
I remember when I went to study architecture in Ljubljana. She stood at the open door and said goodbye. She had tears in her eyes. Her son was starting an independent life.
We never had much money. Except for the first year of college, I supported myself. I worked during the day to make ends meet, and at night I drew programs for college.
Whenever possible, my mother would give me some change to buy myself a few extra treats.
And when I finally finished my studies, I would give her back everything I could.
And then my father died. He spent the last three years of his life in a nursing home. The last two years he just lay there with his eyes closed. I never knew if he was aware of his surroundings. And my mother would visit him every day and spend the entire afternoon with him. She would talk to him, not knowing if he could hear her. But she was sure he could feel her presence.
Then she spent a few years alone. It certainly wasn’t easy for her. But she left her children, me, and my sister to live our own lives.
She was still tight on money, so I paid her expenses wherever and whenever I could.
In January 2020, her heart suddenly failed. Cardiac arrhythmia. Despite everything, she managed to call the ambulance and me. I drove to Celje at full speed, regardless of the restrictions. She stayed in the hospital that same evening. Since she had another heart attack the next day, the surgery was taken immediately and a pacemaker was inserted. After two weeks of intensive care, she came back home. Later, she told me once that she “woke up” during the surgery. She felt like she was floating in the air, just under the ceiling, watching herself on the operating table. She saw the staff moving around her. This feeling lasted only a few moments, but it was so strong that she remembered it …
Then Covid came.
And the decision was made that I could no longer leave her alone. So I moved to Celje.
Considering her age, her health was slowly deteriorating.
In November 2021, we rushed to the emergency room at 2 am. At noon, she was admitted to the abdominal surgery department with a diagnosis of ileus. The next morning, the surgeon calls me and says that the situation is serious and that mom needs urgent surgery. And she tells me to be prepared for anything. But luckily, everything ended well. And it wasn’t cancer. So for the next three years and three months, I changed her stoma bag twice a day. And her stoma pad twice a week.
I put on her socks in the mornings because she couldn’t bend over. I brought her breakfast in bed, took care of all her medications. I made her bed in the evenings.
In the afternoons we went for walk around our block.
On the weekends I made lunch.
I tried to return all the care she gave me as a child now when she needed care herself.
She loved doing crossword puzzles. She did spider solitaire on the computer. She loved tennis and Federer. She was enthusiastic about LD77. She loved watching snooker on Eurosport TV. And Roglič. And Turkish TV series.
On Sunday afternoons, she went to mass in New York. To Father Krizolog via Zoom.
She loved pancakes. And my cooking. And sweet refošk.
She regularly visited the hairdresser.
And then that Tuesday at the end of January 2025 came.
Early in the morning, she said, let’s go to the emergency room. Something in her voice told me that this time it was serious. And we went. After all the tests, she was admitted to the infectious diseases clinic late in the afternoon. The diagnosis was bacterial pneumonia. I was with her late in the evening and she was completely sober. The next day, the doctor called me. The matter was serious and, unfortunately, there was little hope.
Somehow I didn’t want to, I couldn’t accept the facts. Somewhere deep down you always think, it will get better, it will turn around. But it didn’t.
On Thursday afternoon she was calm. They started giving her morphine. At one point she whispered in an almost inaudible voice – I’m going to die. And she squeezed my hand. Then she fell asleep, exhausted.
It wasn’t until much later that it dawned on me. She said goodbye. She said, I’m going to die…
The next morning the phone rang ominously…
And now I just hope that at least some atom of her soul is circling around me and protecting me…