Grief by Mimi Eileen Johnson

Grief. A small, one-syllable word that packs a formidable

 punch. No one escapes its grips; some are tortured their entire

 lives. How do I cope? Why the ebb and flow? How do I

 recognize it? Why did it resurface now? Will it ever stop

 aching? How do I recapture joy with this massive hole in my

 soul?

 On June 9, 2022, for the first time in my life, I lost one of the

 most important people, my grandmother.

She was no ordinary grandmother, she raised me, and we all

 lived together our entire lives. She and my mother grew up in

 Romania, under the insufferable communist regime. They both escaped and were able to build an

 amazing life in the U.S.  I was blessed to grow up bilingual and proud of my Romanian heritage.

   

It was an unbreakable bond that I have never shared with another person, not even my mother. Yes, my

mother and I have a special relationship, but my grandmother was my rock and my world. I watched her

take her last breath over FaceTime, not the way I had envisioned, but was thankful for technology

allowing me to see her one last time.

 

I was sheltered from death, never having anyone close to me pass away. Here I am,

staring at our matriarch, watching her transition into another form. In some ways, it was the most

peaceful experience, especially in lieu of her suffering, but I felt as if I had died right beside

her. I remember hanging up the phone and feeling as if I was having an out-of-body experience. I had

never felt anything like that in my life and I had no idea how to process the information. I sobbed and

sobbed, not fully understanding or processing what I had just watched. That's it? She is gone. Why?

What do I do now? I was attempting to process my thoughts, but I could not, I was frozen, I could

not move, and although I knew I was grieving, I still did not understand the reactions and what I was 

feeling.

So now I am just supposed to go on living without her? How did this happen so fast? More questions

entered my mind as more time elapsed. I felt as if I did not have a right to breathe air anymore because

my beloved grandmother could not either. I battled with my faith in God and was cursing him for taking

her away from me. How could you? Why her and why now? I then realized that my thoughts and

actions sounded a bit selfish. I needed to stop and ask myself what was best for my grandmother and

not my selfish need to keep her here on Earth. I couldn’t help myself, grief makes you inadvertently

selfish.

 

She endured eight years of torture in a nursing home in Northern Virginia. In the beginning I was going

 to see her every single day, ensuring she was never alone, always having a familiar face, and bringing

 all the drinks and foods that reminded her of home. My mother and I were a team that ensured no harm

or neglect would come to her. Unfortunately, in those few times we were not able to go every single

day, the maladies began.

 

Patients with dementia can never fully recall what has happened to them, their reality is fragmented.

There was also the issue of the language barrier. She is Romanian and speaks no English. All

communications happened through me or my mother. If I had to pinpoint the beginning of my grief, at

the time, unbeknownst to me, it would be in 2014, feeling helpless and relying on the hands of strangers

to love and protect my grandmother. At the time, I didn’t realize I was grieving, that little chips of my

existence and my soul were being taken at the sight of so much suffering and pain, not only of my

grandmother, but those around her as well.

 

I am what they call an Empath, I feel energies everywhere and absorb it, whether good or bad. Over

time, I have learned how to shield myself from negative energies, but when surrounded by so much

sorrow and pain, it can take over your mind and body quickly, yet I could not forsake my grandmother

 and leave her without me and my close care. I knew which people were good and which were bad,

 therefore, keeping a keen eye and establishing the right relationships to ensure great treatment. As time

progressed, I channeled my grief into attempting to help those in her nursing home who had no families.

I grieved for them and the wonderful lives they had lived. They were now emaciated, shrouded in

horrible rheumatoid arthritis, withering away as if their lives were never important. When my

grandmother would nap, have a bath, or eating, I would mosey down the hall to visit some of her

wonderful neighbors. I was able to provide comfort to their inevitable deterioration, sometimes not

knowing how impactful it was to their lives or how important it was to my reconciliation with grief and

death.

 

I would have dreams, flashing forward 40 years, when I would need the help and assistance of others.

Could I live in a tiny room like this and be forgotten by everyone? Why does our culture do this to the

elderly? Why is it so expensive to take care of ourselves in the twilight of our lives? Although I knew I

could not predict my own future, I knew I could impact lives in the present.

 

As I was unknowingly grieving for my grandmother’s natural deterioration, I was slowly finding joy in

spending quality time with others who were being forgotten. I wanted them to be remembered, even if I

was the only person on the planet that cared. I listened to countless stories, some about war, others about

 exquisite trips, fashion, happiness, raising families, and the light it brought to their lives was priceless. I

 never knew if the stories were true or not, but in that moment, they were real to them.

In my mind, it was a race against time: I could somehow prevent her from dying if I lived and breathed

that nursing home. How silly of me, right? My selfish grief and attitude convinced me that I

could prolong death. I was on pins and needles every day for 8 years. Every time my mother and I

received a call we would jump and were ready to battle for her life! It was exhausting, but again, I never

realized that was all part of grieving. Your mind cannot reconcile anyone being gone from existence, so

therefore, you try to perform these grandiose feats to prolong their lives.

 

Of course, in the end, nature won the fight, at the hands of irresponsible humans, and we lost her.

Even at 90, she had an amazing will to live. It did not matter what pain or condition was plaguing her,

she always chose life and smiled. She was my hero, and I aspire to be happy like her each day. At the

end, she died due to negligence; from an ordinary UTI that was not treated. The devastation was

insurmountable. I could not wrap my head around this ridiculously simple ailment taking her life. Here I

entered the next stage of grief - anger.

 

I felt a rage that I had never experienced before. I was obsessed with destroying the nursing home and

the staff that neglected her to the point of death. How many more people had their lives end so

tragically and abruptly at the hands of massive incompetency? How could medical professionals let that

happen? Isn’t their oath to “do no harm”?

 

I continually grieved for my grandmother and for others who lost their lives in that nursing

home due to medical neglect, but also lamented the future. Is this what we all have to look forward to?

 Being isolated in a cement room and being treated like someone who does not matter? Someone

 neglecting a urine sample for six months and me dying of a simple UTI, meeting the same fate as my

 grandmother? This simply cannot be! How can I go through this torture again with my mother and

 stepfather?

 

The simplest answer to all my questions is that nature will always win the race no matter how well you

pace your existence. Grief does not happen to people, it is innately engrained in our psyche. It is the

vessel in which we can keep our sanity and continue to live our lives, working through complex

emotions, helping others, and continuing to be good people. I often saw grieving as a weakness, yet.

after experiencing the worst grief of my life, I realize the immense strength it provides in times of

struggle.

 

Now, slightly over a year later, my grief is ever present in each day of my life. I look forward to

experiencing the tears; ironically, it is when I feel most alive! I continually look for signs that my

grandmother is with me, and she never lets me down! She is present in every facet of my life.

Nature and time are the ultimate grim reapers, but only in the physical form. Energy lasts forever. And

 her energy glows in our hearts, in birds, butterflies, and the sunshine bathing her favorite flowers, roses

 and geraniums.

Mom Lived a Life Filled with Hope and Love

The room is mostly empty. Her bed and favorite pillows are gone, donated to patients at the nursing home who don’t have relatives to care enough to visit them or are long gone. Her clothes have been donated as well, the new stuff she did not have a chance to wear still hanging in her closet.

The nightstand holds her glass case and her favorite knick-knacks she could not part with. The dresser and the chest of drawers contain memorabilia she collected over the years, photos, and a few frames with her portraits and those of her two granddaughters and two great-grandsons.

The room is white walled with oil paintings of landscapes and an icon with her favorite rosary blessed by the Pope which we brought back from the Vatican years ago. She liked to pray every night and sometimes in the morning. She crossed herself at every meal like a good Orthodox would do.

She never wore the scarf required by modesty and church attendance for married women in her country – she loved her soft, thick hair colored auburn and we jokingly called her Lucy.

Her baptism name was Niculina (Nicole), but her two brothers and three sisters called her Bibica. Her husband of seven decades called her his Mimi, a term of endearment. To the rest of the family, she was Mimi as well. To her granddaughters, she was Maia, short for Mamaia (Grandma).

Mom loved to walk her oldest granddaughter, a precocious three-year-old, in the nearby cemetery at the university. And Eileen asked her with the innocence of toddlers, “Maia, when are you going to die so I can come see you at the cemetery?” That innocent question has finally come to pass, and mom’s soul flew into the starlight; grief enveloped all of us like a thick fog.

Her semi-bare bedroom and the bathroom, have an echo of emptiness as I step on the cold marble tiles. It is not just hollow of her earthly presence, but it is empty of her happy soul, of her laughter, her chatter, of her tears, her pain, and her loving advice. Bogart can no longer jump and purr in her lap when she watched TV. Her Romanian soap operas were legendary, and she loved to watch them with her adult granddaughter.

Gone is her zest for life and her almost childish happiness at Christmas when she strung the lights everywhere and placed ornaments in the fir tree. Gone is her soothing voice that seldom rose in anger. Her suite is quiet, so quiet that I can hear the rain drops outside. It is an almost eerie quiet, as if rejecting every earthly sound.

She is no longer coming down the steps slowly and carefully, afraid of falling. She is gone in the light, energy that is no longer here. If physicists are correct that energy is never lost but transferred, then where is she?

If something cannot come from nothing, energy cannot be created nor destroyed, but rather transformed into various forms, then where is her power? There was so much light and energy about my mother, what was she transformed into? Is she our guardian angel? Is she the monarch butterfly who found us in the cold October day at Lake Champlain in Vermont? Is she the black and white butterfly who flew about and around our bodies and faces when we took a walk in the woods the morning that my mother died? Is she the dragon fly that surrounds us on the deck, her favorite spot to watch nature and animals?

I talk to her every day, but it is a lonely monologue, not a spirited day-by-day dialog with a human being with a heart, mind, and soul. People tell me that she is in a better place, but what does that mean? What better place? I miss her laughter and her voice. Despite the many hardships she experienced under communism, she always kept a positive outlook – nothing phased her too much and always joked about it.

Mom’s ashes rest in a box in her favorite room to sit down and relax after a walk with Bogart at the edge of the woods. The small altar contains a lock of her hair on top of the urn, her last photo, a large candle which burned at her memorial, her glasses, the last doily she crocheted without a pattern, from the memory jumbled in her dying brain, the crochet needle, her favorite icon and rosary, and her straw hat. She tended to many vegetable and flower gardens wearing that hat.

Mom wanted to be with her siblings, in the family crypt in Romania. The war in Ukraine and the fear of traveling so close to a war zone is depriving mom for now of having her final wishes fulfilled. When the war is over, I hope to be able to carry her urn then to Romania and have mom finally laid to rest in her chosen spot.

For now, I feel like she is home, where she wanted to be before she developed dementia. She was a home body, the perfect domestic engineer who kept us fed, in clean clothes, and a home that was spotless.

My children’s friends were always welcome in our home even though mom could not speak English. But she spoke the language of welcoming strangers in our home, offering them good food, an occasional coke hidden in the unused dishwasher, and simple desserts. Nobody knew her recipes, they were in her head, a pinch of this, and a spoon of that. Once her brain started dying, the recipes were gone too.

The greedy corporatists, who locked the population down for two years to sell their vaccines, have robbed mom and me of the opportunity to see each other as much as we wanted. I could not touch her, I had to see her through a window and on Face Time. As her mind died faster for lack of conversation with me or the staff and complete lack of any mental stimulation from the nursing home which used the Covid lockdown as an excuse to abuse and neglect all elderly by locking them up in their rooms, she sunk into total inability to recognize us. Some days I was her mom, other days her sister, a friend, and even though it was painful to see her decline and the complete erasure of our shared past, I knew her and loved her and that is all that mattered.

I fought hard to force the nursing home to bring her out onto the patio for fresh air while I was made to sit six feet away from her, both with a mask on. When nobody watched, we removed the masks and we talked, smiled, and was able to touch my mom and give her kisses on her forehead and cheek. I read her Romanian fairytales and showed her family pictures. It was the only time that the nursing home treated her with humanity – they washed her and dressed her.

Maybe she is in a better place, without pain and neglect from the abusive west African nurses’ aides and CNAs. No matter how many times a week, each week, I would go to visit mom, varying the times, I would always find them lacking in their care.

After mom’s passing, I made a complaint to the Virginia Department of Health, the department of nursing home certification, they made a two-day unannounced visit, and they found all my allegations to be true. Unfortunately, they stopped short of accessing her medical records since she was deceased, and the nursing home declined them access to mom’s records.

If mom is in a better place, I hope that she knows that I tried my best to care for her health and needs, but my hardest was not good enough against the blatant neglect and abuse of Manor Care Health Services.

Mom lived a life filled with hope and love. She never gave up! Mom’s memory on this earth is eternal in the minds of her immediate family and the friends she made in America.

Many of her extended family members have already passed on. We will all eventually pass into anonymity and oblivion as if we never existed, our names inscribed on a cross, a plaque, a brick, a bench, or a columbarium nest. Our lives are transitory.

We are not exactly sure why God created us, gave us life in the first place, and why He takes it away when the time comes. Mom’s time was on June 9, 2022, at 12:12 a.m. She is probably in Heaven, teaching the Angels how to crochet her favorite pattern, grapes and leaves, and how to garden properly and share the vegetables with neighbors. She fed and cared for so many people during her ninety years of life.

A Comforter for Comfort

Photo wikipedia

An unknown grandma in her winter kitchen that looked 

just like grandma Elena's

The temperatures dropped overnight to almost freezing. I added another snowy white cotton blanket on the bed and, as the soft material flurried to the bed surface like pristine snow, a flashback from my childhood hit me – grandma Elena’s heavy comforter, “plapuma” as we called it, maroon on one side and dark blue on the other. It was stuffed with plenty of wool for warmth, extremely heavy, and just big enough to cover the full-size bed.  I had no idea how she washed it, I never saw her do it, I only saw it hanging on the fence, airing it out from time to time. It had a duvet soft cover which was washed periodically.

The comforter was hand-quilted on both sides with heavy wool and a very large and long needle that managed to penetrate all the layers of wool batting. We had to sleep in fetal position, cuddling for warmth, lest feet and hands dangled outside and got cold during the night in such low temperatures that often frosted the windowpanes.

The pillows were stuffed with the chicken feathers we sacrificed for protein from time to time when the hens stopped laying eggs. Feathers were still attached to quills that would poke us through the pillowcase fabric and sometimes made their way out floating to the ground. The inner cases were made of thick and heavy fabric meant to contain the feathers. The outward decorative pillowcases were a work of art, hand-embroidered with flowers and intricate stitchery, starched and pressed with love and perfection. Such pillowcases and matching embroidered sheets were part of a bridal trunk dowry. Nobody had fitted sheets for their mattresses or a box spring for that matter.

If we were lucky the mattress was stuffed with seaweed or shorn wool, washed, combed, and dried. Many in the village had rough jute mattresses stuffed with straw and were glad to have it.

In summertime the beds were adorned with thin woven blankets with intricate patterns and quite colorful. Aunt Ana was a master weaver who made such beautiful blankets in her loom which occupied a small room in her home. I still see her sitting in front of the threads of the looms, feeding wooden spools of thread through, one row at a time, a work of art that took months to complete. It was fascinating to watch her work so fast, never missing a string in the complicated weave. Row after row she had to change the spools with colors that completed whatever complicated patterns she was working on. She never used a paper blueprint, it was all in her head, her eagle eyes, and her hands.

I am looking at my comforter, silky synthetic material probably woven and manufactured in China by skillful hands. The cleaners will dry it on their racks or driers, no exposure on the fence or pooping birds while drying it fully. It is comfortable, light, warm, and useful but it is not a work of art made by aunt Ana’s skillful hands.

I remember grandma Elena making small rugs from hand-woven strips of old clothes, rugs just big enough to step on when we first got out of bed and the room was just above freezing temperatures. She did not want us to step on the cold floor. And the ever-present chamber pot was hidden under the wooden bed which grandpa had fashioned in his little shop attached to the house, a modest lean-to that was absolutely frigid in winter.

The communists did not bother to produce comforters, it was up to a few skilled hands in the city or in the village who produced enough to sell to other people for a modest fee. I was always in awe that the Communist Party allowed such home-artisans to make something. I suppose since it was such an unprofitable endeavor, if you took into account the number of hours devoted vs. the actual price, they did not bother to censure its existence.

Memories of Maita

Maita's house, after a fresh coat of paint in 2012

Maita’s real name was Elizabeta. Her intense blue eyes and will power could pierce through steel. She wore her long light brown hair tight in a bun and covered with a dark bandana to protect her head and face from the intense sunlight. With advanced age, her thick hair turned snow white. A tiny spitfire of a woman of maybe 80 lbs., she lost her husband in her early thirties, leaving her to raise eight children alone. Grandpa Mihail was a busy man, in-between farm chores and fathering children. Dead long before I was born, I was told that daddy favored him the most, out of three boys and five girls.

The clay-brick and wooden logs homestead was perched on a beautiful mountain surrounded by fruit orchards and small vineyards. Underneath the rich black soil were layers upon layers of salt that would someday doom the entire side of the mountain and the small farms as the topsoil slid down the foothill crashing everything in its path, trees, homes, barns, and vineyards, burying everything many families held dear for generations.  Fortunately nobody was seriously hurt as most people were working other fields or in government factories at the edge of the nearest town.

The communist party rulers made a meek attempt at helping those who lost their homes by offering them for sale small plots of land elsewhere in the village, not so isolated from their grasp.

Photo: Ileana Johnson 2012

 

The front porch would offer a shady respite in summer time but in wintertime hungry wolves would be so brazen as to climb the few front steps in their quest for food.  Shiny eyes could be seen in the dark followed by hair-raising howls echoing in the distance, sometimes really close.

The chicken coup and shed were safe and tightly latched. The pig, sheep, and the cow, which provided milk, butter, and cheese for her large family, were also sheltered and locked at night.

Maita's gate and grapevines

Photo: Ileana Johnson 2011

 

Each child had a well-defined role and daily chores in her family. There were no idle little hands; everyone had to care for each other and to earn their keep. The most hated chore was walking up and down the mountain to the deep well activated by a wooden chained bucket and a wheel and covered by a heavy wood cover to prevent debris, animals, and small children from falling in. With each trip, boys had to carry back to the house two large buckets of ice-cold water balanced on a very heavy stick on both shoulders.

If a lot of snow accumulated, the clusters of trees, vines, and the orchards kept it in place; now and then mini-avalanches would bury some trees and fences in their path.

When the three boys were old enough to get jobs in the city, they joined the village men on the open transport truck. Traveling like cattle every day on the bumpy unpaved road for miles of miserably wet or frigid weather to a menial job, they resigned themselves to the proletariat’s  fate, working for slave wages for the communist utopia which pretended to protect them. On at least one occasion, a passenger was let off at his stop but he never made the long walk on foot up the mountain to his home; he was found frozen in the ditch along the way. After a six-month period of mourning, the tough life moved on.

Photo: Ileana Johnson 2012

 

Sound carried so well across the valleys that it was hard to judge how far people or animals making the sounds were. As a child, I often heard aunt Leana calling out from the front porch of her tiny house above the tree lines to Maita’s home, telling us to come for lunch or a special treat she had baked. And it was a long and breath-taking hike to her house or so it seemed to a small child.

I would judge the distance based on the beautiful cross and Orthodox icon along the way, nestled in a covered shelter where the villagers would stop briefly for a prayer and a drink of water from the bucket and cup left fresh each day by the nearby community well.

Photo: Ileana Johnson 2012

 

The silence punctuated by our huffs and puffs would be startled sometimes by a concealed voice coming from a person behind a fence covered in grape vines, saying hello or asking how we were doing. Maita was so proud when her neighbors would fawn over her visiting granddaughter.

After the landslide precipitated by melting snow and gliding layers of salt, Maita rebuilt a home next to her oldest son Nicolae in the middle of the village, conveniently close to the only store, the bus stop, the cemetery, and the village church.  From the front porch we could see the valley below shrouded in mist at dawn and filled with endless rows of grapevines and fruit trees. When the sun came up, the cold creek we bathed in each week sparkled like a jewel.

I stayed in this mud-brick home every summer. It was always cool and smelled of quince and autumn smoke. Maita cooked on a spit fire her famous chicken in the cast iron pot and tasty smoked beans when she was fasting. She had a large garden with plenty of vegetables to feed herself and her son’s large family next door.  A small opening in the fence allowed for quick passage to the two properties separated by a weathered fence.

Today the house is sadly abandoned. The heirs cannot agree on what to do with the property that nobody wants. The blue metal gate is in need of a new coat of paint and creaks in the wind when it opens. The rust spots match the grape leaves on the vines overhanging the walkway. I tread lightly, careful not to disturb the past. The porch is latched just as Maita and her son Ion used to do it. Her last child passed away last summer but his presence is still felt in the garden now overrun with weeds.

Maita's last house

Photo: Ileana 2011

 

I peer inside through a window. The furniture looks just like the furniture I grew up with in our home. He must have transferred it here from the city after my daddy passed away. I am looking for my grandma’s icon and garnet rosary that used to hang on the wall but it is missing, probably sold long time ago by uncle Ion.  A priceless work of art, the 19^th century rosary and icon must have fetched good money on the market. When we no longer care for history, even valuable prayer objects become disposable. Poor and suffering people in a collectivist society cannot afford to be sentimental.

Aunt Leana's grape vines

Photo: Ileana 2011

 

I walked up the mountain to visit aunt Leana’s surviving husband, uncle Stelian. After a long hike, I found their stucco home with the porch I used to play on as a child. Somehow the climb seemed much shorter but just as breathless and difficult, and the homes and plots of land much smaller than I had remembered them as a child.

Uncle Stelian in his yard

Photo: Ileana 2011

 

Stelian was in the yard, sitting on a makeshift stool, drinking his beloved homemade wine and prune brandy. We spoke through the same fence I recall from decades ago. He did not invite me in. Confused as if he’d seen a ghost from the past, it took him a while to remember me and my name. I snapped his photo through the wooden slats of the fence, wishing sadly that I could have seen aunt Leana once more. Her caring hands and sky-blue eyes have long left this earth. Her beautiful and devout Christian voice still echoes in the Orthodox Church by the cemetery.

Leana and Maita's water well

Photo: Ileana 2011

 

The shade cast by the grape vines above sheltered the courtyard from the hot sun just as I remembered it.  The smell of ripened quince, purple plums, and crushed grapes carried by a gentle breeze flooded my memory.  I returned to my world, thousands of miles away, with a painful and unexplainable regret and a feeling of permanent loss, taking a moment in time back with me, stuck on a memory card.

Late Summer Rain Brings More Memories

Photo: Ileana Johnson 2015
Water pump installed long before
I was born

The hot summer has been suddenly replaced by a cold-driving fall rain. The water is soaking steadily into the parched dirt. There is a hurricane on its way, disguising its ugly wrath under a flowery name, Florence. Nature can use the rain but not the wrath and destruction of this massive swirling giant, picking up speed in the Atlantic and moving towards the Carolinas.

We gave up watering the dry lawn a few weeks ago as the grass turned brown from the oppressively humid heat. It rained a lot earlier in the summer but then it stopped.

Wild animals, deer, rabbits, coyotes, and raccoons were coming closer and closer to the front door, looking for fresh water. I filled the three bird baths daily but the water was always gone. Deer trampled the flower beds searching for water and fresh green grass. Why this water tasted better than the pond or the river nearby, I would never understand.

On days like this, my memory takes me to my grandma’s clay dirt and straw brick house with its tiny windows. When it rained, the interior became quite dark so I sought the outdoors under the large awning over a concrete patio. I enjoyed sitting and watching the rain fall, turning the grassless yard into a sloshy landscape with tiny rivers dug into the mud. The yard birds chirped and the pig squealed with joy. Thunder in the distance broke the domestic tranquility and lightning cracked an invisible whip in the sky.

I was too young to know or understand why grandpa never graveled the yard, installed pavers for a pathway, or planted sturdy grass that we could walk on without sinking into deep mud. Grandma’s rubber boots helped if they did not get sucked in and stuck ankle deep with a grip so powerful, no pulling could disentangle the vice like hold of the mud. He probably could not afford pavers or gravel, raising six children even in the country was not easy.

I was just happy to be with him, to ask questions to which he always had a fascinating answer. Grandpa was a self-taught man who loved books. He instilled in me the love of reading, exploring, and asking questions of scholarly men from whom I learned so much.

He always brought out the few copies of National Geographic which a team of American archeologists had left behind when they finished their summer Roman digs at the edge of the village. They stayed with grandpa as he had a beautiful and fully furnished brick home that was never used by family unless his youngest son visited from the city 60 km away. He unlocked this magical house for him and I would sneak in and play with his Roman coin collection or grandma’s shoes and purse from her dowry trunk. As was the case with everyone, his brick home did not have running water or a sewer system. The outhouse was in the back and the cast iron water pump was in the middle of the yard.

The rest of the year, grandpa and grandma lived and slept in the tiny two-bedroom mud and straw brick house with the kitchen at the other end and a generous loft where he kept hay, dry corn, and wheat from that year’s harvest, along with armies of mice and numerous flee-infested cats who kept the mice population under control.

The peasants were lucky to get electricity in the early 1970s even though the village was located only 9 km from a very large industrial town. Before then, the oil lamps were the only form of light at night. No street lamps either, just the starry nights, darkness, and scary stories sitting with the neighbors outside the gate on the wooden bench, specially made for this purpose, for chatting with neighbors and catching up on the village news and gossip.

People lived so close to each other and crowded, separated only by a wooden fence, with no land in between homes. It was impossible not to know everybody else’s business. The rest of the land was used for personal gardening and for Communist Party’s collective farms.

Bolsheviks were U.N. Agenda 21/2030 compliant long before the globalists of today decided to install worldwide communism and force people off their private property into high-rise, mixed-use buildings in the city under the guise of Green Growth, Sustainability for the sake of environmental protection - such an easy way to control the dumbed-down and crowded population.

Grandpa commuted to work 18 km round-trip for over 40 years on his bicycle, rain or shine, even in the snow. He could not afford the rickety communist bus that ran twice a day to and from the city and riding for free in the open cargo area of a large factory truck like cattle was out of the question.

Today’s globalists are attempting to remove us from our cars and force everyone into public transportation and bikes. They are even going to tax bike users on the many expensive bike paths that are being built around the country in a mad rush to socially engineer everything we do because, if it worked so well for communist China and socialist Europe, it must be good for us too.

At least the Soviets pretended to care for agriculture, for the food supply of the people. They forcibly confiscated their property and moved them off the land into crowded villages in order to form their collective farms on the joined land where everybody worked and, regardless of effort applied, got an even portion at harvest time, while the commies took their lion’s share first.

Some of the villagers worked harder than others but they shared the harvest equally. Humans are not so altruistic that they would put forth effort for others indefinitely. Pretty soon everyone slacked off.  There was no incentive to work harder. The factory communist motto, “we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us,” eventually stretched to farming as well and fields remained unproductive and full of weeds. Such was socialism, it bred laziness - everyone became dependent on the omnipotent government who doled out crumbs.

 

Through the Fog of Time

The creek of our childhood Photo: Ileana 2015

As we age, humans tend to mellow out and nothing that had previously been that important matters anymore in the grand scheme of things. All struggles, frustrations, successes, victories, defeats, losses, and gains, dissipate in the fog of time. Regrets and memories of opportunities lost, of physical pain, of mental anguish and frustration diminish, replaced by arthritis, loneliness, and loss of loved ones. The struggle is still there for billions of others, very real and painful, but it seems almost irrelevant to us.

Romanians just lost their King Michael to old age, very old age, and their last hope that a monarchy might somehow right all the wrongs that had plagued the country politically was dashed and died with him. There won’t be another king. Some mourned him, most did not even know he existed nor cared. Like here, these citizens are part of the #resist movement yet they have no idea what they are resisting.

Yesterday I met one of my first cousins I adore (I have 27) and his lovely daughter Elena for lunch in a town nearby in Virginia. It was surreal. If you had told me 39 years ago that someday in the future, in a state far away, thousands of miles away from my former home in Romania, I would see one of my first cousins again, I would have been extremely incredulous and would have laughed, a physical impossibility.

Photo: Ileana Johnson 2015

 

Yet here we were, reminiscing about our childhood, how fast time flew, how my aunt passed away a week after a severe cough had plagued her for months, and the second stroke that killed my uncle while gardening. We compressed almost four decades of life, weddings, baptisms, burials, disputes, schools, professions, and family into two hours, surrounded by spouses, children, and grandchildren. Good food and beloved company are always relaxing.

He asked me about retirement, teaching, accomplishments, life in America, and it almost seemed like we were talking about someone else. What teaching accomplishments? It was just a job that paid me well. No teacher of the year for me and certainly no thanks for a job well done. I was not a Democrat, nor a communist, how could I possibly succeed in education and thrive? Mediocrity and collectivist politics ruled around me in academia. My cousin was shocked.

I told him about all the communists in education in America and he was almost incredulous. How could any rational human being possibly think that a Marxist ideology that killed 100 million people around the world can even remotely be considered in this beautiful country built on free markets, not oppression and tyranny?

My cousin had to work in difficult places around the world in order to bring home enough cash to build a beautiful villa for his family. Two of his three beautiful daughters moved to America, just like I did, in order to find freedom and opportunity for success that had been denied to many still in Romania, twenty-eight years after the “fall” of communism. They joined the five million other Romanians who immigrated around the globe in search of a better life for themselves and their families.

We talked about adjustment and assimilation, learning the language, becoming an American citizen and losing my Romanian citizenship, how it was so much harder for an older person to learn a new language and how little my mom learned in 37 years. Cousin Ionel learned Russian in school and found it much easier to learn and speak than the English language, even with the Cyrillic alphabet. Russian is very phonetic, it is pronounced the same way it is written, no wild variations as in the English language, he added.

We reminisced about fishing and swimming in the crystal clear river in his village, a river now so shallow that it looks more like a creek. The landscape was more verdant as more trees grew around it, seeded by the blowing wind. A nicely paved rural road now runs nearby, no more gravel roads, picking up dust every time the bus drove through.

Now every home has a nice car, food on the table, no lines, and a well-stocked country store, owned by his brother. The store stocks fresh meat and vegetables, frozen food, fresh bread, wine, sugar, cooking oil, flour, and anything a cook might need. There is even a gas pump on the side of the road. No gas station around it, just the pump. Bringing free markets to Romania changed the pastoral and isolated life for so many.

We talked about growing up. Cousin Ionel had three brothers and one sister. At meal time there was never enough to eat, it was a free-for-all. My aunt placed a large bowl of food in the middle of the table and the meal began after a very brief mandatory prayer, no portion sizes, whoever ate the fastest, got more to eat first. Poor Gigi, the runt of the family, was always left behind and hungrier than the rest. Even so, there was still not enough to nourish five growing children, we were still hungry and thin when we finished a meal, he said. I used to watch them eat so fast, wondering why my aunt did not give them each equal portions. As an only child, I only had to share food with my mom and dad. We were always hungry ourselves but I did not have to fight siblings at mealtime.

I looked at our table laden with food which we did not prepare but we could afford to pay someone else to prepare for us. Ionel and I never saw restaurant food when we were children and young adults. If it did not come from mom’s or grandma’s kitchen, we went hungry. Later in life, as we gained freedom of movement and our financial fortunes improved, we were able to taste our first restaurant meals and foods we’ve never known existed. Ionel is so cosmopolitan when compared to most people that he will eat any food put in front of him. He traveled around the globe through various jobs and sampled many cuisines and so did I.

It was sad to see him go, to say good-bye, almost as surreal as getting on a plane and finding yourself on the other side of the globe in mere hours. We were together for brief and happy moments, found our common roots, reminisced, but then we were lost again in the fog of time. A few photographs were the only proof that we celebrated today the memories from another life, far away from our humble beginnings.

 

Marital Advice from My Grandma's Era

 

Photo: Wikipedia

I found an interesting old book that my Grandma, in her youth, would have been familiar with, which described the qualities of a good wife. Was there a magical formula for a long and happy marriage? In an era when arranged marriages were the norm, the consensus was that marriage was a “lottery," you either won it or you didn’t.*

Seventy years ago, this was the “practical” advice married women gave to those engaged to be married:

1.       Defend and respect one another.

2.       Don’t wear the same dress every day; change it with a bow, a belt, a new collar, a colorful scarf, or a ribbon.

3.       If you use face cream, don’t let him see you.

4.       Do not wear droopy nylons because husbands seem to have an aversion to them.

5.       Never gargle in front of him and never wear house shoes - they are too unattractive.

6.       Never serve him coffee without first combing your hair.

7.       Never talk to him until after he’s had his first cup of coffee.

8.       Don’t bother him or talk to him when he shaves. Shaving and dressing are a ritual which men like to do alone without verbal interruption.

9.       Don’t talk to him when he reads the paper and make sure his ashtray is close by. I think the Marlboro Man would have been proud of this one.

10.   Pretend to listen intently when he shares things he likes, even though they may bore you to death.

11.   Learn to cook what he likes but also what you like.

12.   Improvise fun things to do at home and always smile as if you were in public, never show anger or displeasure to him, only a happy face.

13.   Once a week, allow him to have time with his buddies as if he were single.  Don’t ask him where he goes; he will tell you when he comes back.

14.   If he has a passion, such as collecting stamps or listening to certain shows on the radio, encourage it and engage him in conversation about it.

15.   When he makes a mistake and talks about it, don’t criticize him because he may never tell you again when he makes the next mistake.

16.   Don’t be sick too often, men don’t like sickly women.

17.   When he exalts the virtues of other women, don’t get upset; he is probably doing it because he knows you are missing that virtue.

18.   When he comes home every night, give him the impression that you waited on him with love all day.

19.   Don’t talk on the phone with your family when he is at home; do that when he is at the office.

20.   Get ready for the theater half an hour before departure time – men don’t like to be late for anything.

21.   Don’t bother him with your daily housewife problems or kids when he comes back tired from the office. Have supper ready and leave him alone.

22.   Never accept dinner or party invitations without first consulting with him. He has to approve first before you RSVP.

23.   Be ready to fix whatever wardrobe item requires attention.

24.   Never, ever clean his desk or even touch it.

25.   Never give up your profession or your trade. There may come a time when the kids are gone and you will be all alone in the house, a wife without a compass.

26.   Don’t forget your old friends but create new ones in your husband’s circles.

27.   For every man, his job is his first love. The love for you is secondary. Don’t ask him all the time if he loves you. Don’t tell him you hate him when you have arguments.

28.   For women, love comes in first place while a job comes in secondary.

29.   Don’t try to give him advice all the time; he does not want to hear it.

30.   Don’t talk about money because he does not like to hear it. If you need something important or valuable, manipulate his vanity and pride.

31.   Don’t force him to have relationships with families you like.

32.   Don’t speak ill of his relatives as it is almost sure that your relatives are just as bad.

33.   Help him with well-placed hints as to what presents you wish him to buy for you.

34.   Say yes to everything but then do what you want later. Never tell him no.

Last but not least, women warned that marriage was not a subscription to eternal love. Life, even without “rosy illusions,” could be colorful enough.

*The Code of a Good Wife (pp. 24-27)