Saved Love

Among the many important items on my shelf, my grandfather's birth certificate from 1914 holds a special place. It was written in Russian during a time when Poland was under partition. It was also a time when Polish independence was slowly being restored. Looking at this memento, events related to him always come back to my mind. My grandfather's life reflects decades of our homeland's history. Who knows, perhaps its most dramatic years? I know them intimately from my grandmother's stories. They both served Poland during difficult times, serving at a time when their love became increasingly mature and emotional. My grandfather, a soldier in the September Campaign, went to the front. In 1939, a bomb explosion, wounded by shrapnel, left him blindHe almost lost his life. Every inch of the ground he fought on was plowed by German shells. His wounded grandfather was evacuated by his combat comrades. He recounted that despite his severe wound and his condition, he felt bullets of various calibers flying through the air, slashing the ground and the bodies of the combatants. He felt only excruciating pain and a terrible darkness enveloping him. His sense of time and space vanished. While evacuating from the battlefield, he fell into the hands of the Germans, who took him to a hospital, where they subjected him to various experiments. It was then that he completely lost his vision, which had been damaged by the battle. He was released from captivity. This was the impetus to live. He was free, though crippled. The greatest joy a person can receive from God, fate, or providence. This unleashed joy and a will to live. A desire to do something good for others. He was seriously wounded, but in his heart he resolved to continue standing on the barricades and fighting for his country. Even though war raged around him, his grandmother was still waiting for him at home. As if, despite the pain and suffering, fate was telling them to be happy.

Despite this, he and my grandmother decided to marry two years later. My grandfather, unable to see, had to cope with emptiness and loneliness despite the joy he experienced. He missed his grandmother when she wasn't around. Battle-hardened, he bravely coped with all the hardships that came his way. And his grandmother, it seems, spent all those years riveted on this event of her youth. She listened intently to her grandfather's words and stories about Poland, our nation, about the beautiful people and their heroic stances during the war. She heard not only human words but also human pain, fear, and helplessness, which don't have to be the last voice in a person's life.

When she died at the age of 100, she told us that in the midst of the war, providence and fate probably imagined it all, because she had some plan for them.

Today, our grandparents are no longer with us.

They lived and were there for us for so many years. They left an empty place behind, but also love and memory.

Recently, while on a trip to Warsaw, my niece visited the quarters of Polish soldiers from the September Campaign. She later told me that she was thinking about her great-grandparents and Poland. That perhaps one day we would meet them again on the other side. That they would reach out to us and tell us once again about the most difficult and beautiful things in their lives.

I thought then that our shared journey, so deeply connected to our homeland, began sometime ago and continues...