You asked me to remember you sometime and yes I do. Pokoj ti duši.

I want to write about my grandmother, and this will also be written to her wherever she is now. She thought me very fundamental things when I way young, so much that I never went to kindergarden and stayed with her – watching science documentaries, reading, doing crosswords and other things they don’t think kids should learn at young age. And her being a retired widow had time for me, so she was always there. 10 years ago on this day my grandmother Katarina passed away. I’m amazed how alternative she was as a Catholic in the old world of values. Also informed about things like the Nazca lines, history and lots of other things. She was the first one that mentioned the legend of Atlantis to me. So now when I’m almost 30 I see how few people actually ever get outside of the information they are served. And here was the nice Catholic widow, too poor to travel the world, reading into and getting as much out of her love for knowledge as she could. I really think she would have loved the internet.

Her life was filled with war and she made it through two of them. Her father, husband and son were all in the army. Sadly she did live to experience being bombed by her own son. But she was loving and forgiving. Helping people in need in the darkest of moments. Like hiding people in her home and protecting the weak in the heat of the war.

The 6th of March is the day she died, back in 2005. Although the sickness clogged upp her mind some years before that. She was no longer what she was, as the soul was taken over by the ill body. But of course she was there and while dying we talked to her and the sick body was passive, so the tears of hers came when we sang to her and by and by she was conscious of the situation. At the time of death I felt it was good for her to leave all this behind, specially the suffering of her last years in life.

She was the oldest of three daughters, which in the first half of the 20th century meant taking on the responsibility. Specially during the hard living conditions between WWI and WWII. For her it meant to start working and leave out her passion, which was for writing, literature and language. She always felt disappointed for that I believe, but didn’t take it out on others.

I sometimes wonder what would have happened if she had moved to some western country and went for her ambition. She’d probably become a scholar, written some stuff and traveled more. That’s also one sad thing, she always read and learned about places around the world and never went to them. Keep in mind it was the era before cheap flights and she got caught up in obligations to family, kids and so on. It was the old values in the Balkans

I’m doing it though, I’m traveling, writing and learning. The world is my home and I’d be forever hungry for knowledge if she hadn’t inspired me.