#12 ’GodLess’
Painting: Tibor Hartig
ELEMENTARY
12.
‘GodLess’
We called my paternal grandmother Ómama. That was a typical name for a grandmother in the families where both Hungarian and German languages were spoken. To me, she was a fascinating old woman, with steel character, always dressed in black, with a black scarf on her head, that carried in it the whole content of the bible. I was grateful to her stories which I listened to with much curiosity and forever planted in me as an inspiration in a form of metaphorical wisdom.
Ómama was blessed with a very healthy long life, lived in a very peculiar way.
Her life journey began at the end of the 19th century. Nobody ever really knew the exact year of her birth. It might have been 1892 or 1895. Being an orphan, a lot of questions stayed unanswered even to her… There was never really much fuss about that, because, back then the life of a person had so much less individual value.
She lived through a couple of wars among which also the two big wars. Each of those took a husband from her. Not moving from a single little town, during her lifetime she was a citizen of several counties. Austro-Hungary, the Serbian Kingdom, after the First World War The Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenians and at last, after the great victory, in the Social Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
She had three sons out of loving marriage to a decent man that lost his life in the First World War. He never stepped off the train that brought back his comrades from the Russian front. Ómama waited at the train station with their three little children to learn from the eyewitnesses that he had been heavily wounded at the last day of his service, died on the train from which he had to be thrown out, for in those times understandable reasons. She never got an official death certificate. She waited for a long time, hoping he would miraculously find his way back to her. But with one more certificate missing in her life, eventually, she had to move on.
A single woman, a mother of three, living in a little shed on bread and water, she had to search for a solution and started looking for a job.
The legend says, she knocked on the door of the school in her little town that was hiring a cook. She sat down and explained her situation. The director, gentleman, cantor of the Protestant Church said kindly that she would be very welcome to have the job, but that he suggested, it would be interesting to also consider marrying him, moving into his big and empty house, and to cook and do all the necessary household chores as his wife. Her three sons were welcome too! It didn’t take a long time for Ómama to accept this generous offer. As an addition to the newfound ‘job’, she gave life to another eight children, of which my father was the youngest.
In a household of eleven children, the legend says, by the time my father was supposed to get a name, nobody could be bothered with it, so she threw him on one occasion high in the air to prove his importance. Flying through the room to catch the white bundle, Ótata shouted: Tibor.
Tibor was seven years old when the Second World War made its way to their hometown. Shortly after that, Ótata’s fragile health gave in and he died of one or another lung disease, typical for those times.
That made Ómama a widow for the second time. This time with eleven children. She was not a weak woman. She was a tiger. That she proved more than enough times, beating all the odds when it came to the survival of all of them.
On one of the cold winter days, the legend goes on, there was a knock on the big front door. It was a knock of destiny. A knock of a priest. He came into the house and our lives with a promise of a safe place to Ómama and all her good children in the kingdom where lambs are not afraid of lions. With the ticket to heaven came a thick black book with red sides. With the book came also an oath, that a couple of rules of the holy order will be followed in love and obedience towards the Lord. In return, belonging to a flock that share the same values and being rewarded and protected was a guarantee.
Ómama said yes. Yes to praying on Saturdays, not eating meat, living life clean of all the vices and violence, fasting on Fridays and waiting for the Messiah to come back to this earth and take all his good disciples with him to the promised afterlife. Dress code was clear, so was the mild behaviour, the regular prayer and the strict commitment which made her youngest child never recover from the frustration of missing out all the opportunities of education and life callings, and constant hunger manifesting for the rest of his life as a fight for survival at the dining table…
As the devil has his ways, he found the path to the soul of the little one, my father. Irresistibly, he fell in love with music and as soon the age of maturity and independence allowed, he ran off from home into a music school, grabbed a cello and in a couple of years completed his so long-awaited education. Having to listen to the cries of the angels praying for his poor soul, he got caught up in the conflict of the Great Controversy between Jesus Christ and Satan. Mesmerised by the power of pleasures and immoral thoughts he battled through his life committed to his rich creative mind. Having denounced God, he found his freedom in his cello, his music scores, his painting, caricatures and later in poems…
A brutal freedom it was! The freedom that was only possible to defend with war and fences!
In our house, the word God was not welcome. Ómama’s very rare visits were a stressful time, always leading to discussions and bitterness. Blaming and shaming.
I still found the Biblical stories amusing, and rather inspiring, and couldn’t understand how someone who worked so hard to create this world created so much suffering. I chose to stand aside and not get into the endless family discussions about Ómama’s choices and God, which lead to one by one of her offspring disappearing from our lives… If there is an afterlife, I believe they are still arguing about something even there.
Growing up in a socialist country I didn’t have a need or opportunities to have a religious standpoint. At the end of the year, we decorated a pine tree and a man with a white beard came to bring us some presents just because it is the end of a year, and we celebrated full of hope that the next one is going to be the best year ever…
Moving to my new country led to a funny realisation that actually people go to churches and that holidays like Christmas are widely celebrated. It was amusing to my friends that I wasn’t sure which on which day baby Jesus was born…
Eventually, on my journey, I created a personal belief system. One that can be in or out of the church. An all-around act of kindness and the sacred universe within us. Striving for the best version of my self, not harming anyone around me… OM.
