Theme: My Dad

It’s morning. Another day he sailed into life. I’m richer. The greatest wealth is to have dear people around you. Then I’m not rich, because I haven’t had a father for 8 years. He contracted cancer, but I don’t think he was destroyed by the disease, but by the sadness that befell him because of the events that took place in the then country of Yugoslavia. He grew up in a mixed marriage between Masharica and Ceha, and he himself, loving my mother, entered into the same relationship, where he was a Catholic and she an Orthodox. Believing in God is a treasure, but not being of another faith at the moment when the country is falling apart and in which they are suddenly divided into Serbs and Croats.
He was educated and served as a military man, and thus had the obligation to defend his country, he gave up the fight, not because he was not brave enough, but because he knew that in that war there was no time to fight, because he had four of us children in whom their blood was mixed and he did not know which one to leave in Croatia and which one to take to Serbia. He made the decision not to share anything, least of all our lives. He took off his uniform and became a deserter, and I would say he just loved his own. He was and remains a peacemaker, our father, who was and remains the greatest hero for us.

I know, you will think that he betrayed the country, the vocation, the faith, but I don’t think so, because I know that he saved his family and did not allow his children to be divided in half, to wander around the world without an identity.

He went through captivity in the war, they told him that they would sober him up, they flooded him with cold water in the middle of winter, and since then he has fallen ill. I would often sit at the table when I got home from Serbia to Croatia, because life gives us ways, and we don’t know where to go with our left foot, because the right foot is used to always going straight. He is no more, but an angel exists in heaven and he is watching us there, and when the four of us gather at the same table, I feel that his tears are still flowing because of me.
In the war he went through captivity, they told him he would become wiser, they poured cold water on him in the middle of winter and he has been sick ever since. He often sat at the table when I returned home, a brother from Germany, an older sister from Italy, a younger one from Bosnia and Herzegovina and I from Serbia to Croatia, because life gives us ways, and we don’t know where to go with our left foot, because our the right foot always went straight. He is no longer alive, but an angel exists in heaven and watches us, and when the four of us gather at the same table, I feel his tears still flowing because of me, because of the four of us who live our dreams in the four corners of the world.
Dijana Uherek Stevanović