There was so much more I wanted to ask you...

Most fairy tales have happy endings, we live happily ever after etc. etc. Well, it turns out not all do.

It was Sunday morning and I had just left the place that I was staying in in London when my mobile phone rang. Seeing it was a call from the Geneva PGT/KGT homestead, where I was visiting less than 48 hours previously - see my last post -  I thought that they were calling to find out if my trip to London went smoothly and if I was safely ensconced in my digs and on my way to see the relatives soon. The tone of KGT's voice, however,  alerted me that something was seriously amiss; after initial greetings she broke the news to me that her brother, our beloved PGT, had passed away the previous evening after a fall inside their home.

Two days before I had been with them, had gone for a walk with PGT, we'd talked and laughed, then talked some more, had lunch, had coffee with our friend NA, discussed the coming summer and Romania. When I said that I was leaving for London the following day he had seemed a bit surprised, but we confirmed that I would return to Geneva soon, or possibly see him in Romania during the summer like last year so we could pick up where  we left off. He was a man looking forward to at least the immediate future, and making plans. And, as always, he had wisdom and advice aplenty for whoever needed it.

Entirely selfishly, I miss him enormously already. He has been such a big part of my life since 1981 or so, when he first invited me to lunch in London so that we could meet for the first time; we hit it off immediately, to the great pleasure of his favourite cousin, my grandmother. We subsequently met on several occasions and, when I finished my Masters Degree at the London Business School, he offered me space within his London office so that I could start my own business. Along the way he offered advice, wisdom, contacts and kindness, together with some strict tellings-off when my youthful enthusiasm (stupidity???) got the better of me. He was not in the office all the time, as he constantly travelled around Europe and the rest of the world, bursting with ideas for new businesses and looking for partnerships to help start and run them.

PGT was an ideas man, constantly coming up with them in all the years I knew him, imaginative, positive, unquenchable ideas.  For most day-to-day details he needed and employed others and was perhaps not as lucky in some of his choices as he deserved to be, so that he was less successful than might have been. Within all that he also taught me the role luck played in success (something an arrogant young man in his twenties thought little of - remember the 'we make our own luck' mantra?) which he used as an explanation and never as an excuse. Even last summer in Romania he was planting ideas about new business activities in my head, or trying to!

Now he's gone, and I can no longer turn to him for information and wisdom about so many things, but mainly family and the past in Romania and elsewhere, business and life. There are so many things running around in my mind now that only he could answer; they will now never be asked.

While, of course, I celebrate PGT's long and fruitful life, filled with achievement, respect and real affection, and understand the natural cycle and the normality of death for people of a certain age, I grieve with all my heart the loss of this wonderful man.