Indomitable spirit

My loyal reader - yes, you! - will remember my post of August 2017 titled 100 is the magic number, in which I talked about a beloved relative (PGT) and the celebrations family and other friends participated in on that happy occasion. This was a short two years ago, in fact a year and nearly ten months ago, but who's counting, and it was an incredible time in a wonderful setting - Sinaia, in Romania.

Well, that was then and this is now. On the 21st of May I headed to Geneva to stay with a kind and wonderful friend, NDI, who for his sins lives and works there and who, for his other, obviously plentiful, sins, is always happy to provide a bed and warm hospitality for me. I am able, thanks to his kindness and generosity, to use his home as a base while staying in Geneva, as I go and visit my relatives  living about a mile away near the shores of lake Geneva. These relatives, a brother and sister team (PGT and his sister KGT), are my paternal grandmother's first cousins; the brother is the man whose 100th birthday we celebrated in Romania.

You see, international little shit that I am, my paternal grandmother was a Greek of Romania and, as my father was her first child and she was very young, she wanted to have him close to her mother in Bucharest. Hence my dad was born in Bucharest, back in the first quarter of the 20th century. Now my dad, my grandmother and most of her family, have all died, leaving a gap that her cousins were partly able to fill, giving me facts and figures about the family's life in Romania. And I asked many questions, as family, roots etc. mean a lot to me, a heck of a lot!

Between the 21st and the 25th of May I was able to visit with them daily, go out for walks with PGT, have lovely lunches, talk, laugh and learn about the past, and about life in general. Despite his advanced age PGT was already making plans to go to Romania, land of his birth, in the summer; we were trying to see whether it would be possible for me to join him again for a few days. During our walks we sat on a bench by Lake Geneva, enjoying the lovely weather and the feeling of family camaraderie, despite our age difference. It was just wonderful, simple, loving.


It is just amazing to find such a zest for life at such an advanced age, the curiosity, the desire to understand new things, better understand old things, the capacity for caring for others when so many of us become mean-spirited and selfish. PGT showed no meanness of spirit, no obsession with himself and his health. We discussed an accident that befell him in the street a few weeks ago in a matter of fact way and he said, without a trace of self-pity, that when he tripped, fell and was unable to get up he thought his time was up. Then others rushed to his aid, picked him up and his indomitable spirit pushed away the negativity; revived, he lived to fight another day. His reaction to that misadventure was, simply, to say that 'this was the end of his walks on his own', at nearly 102 years old. What an amazing man, our PGT!

When I left them on Friday afternoon they were both in good spirits. We had had a lovely lunch, then our friend NA came round for coffee, so there was much talk all around of Romania, the coming summer, plans etc. As I was flying off to London the next day we talked about our relatives there and my upcoming visit with them, bringing them news from Geneva, and about meeting up again soon. We parted on an au revoir, not an adieu, until the next time.