Shooting Star

They say that when a new soul arrives, another soul leaves.

In 2014, I met a man and we fell in love almost immediately.

We soon moved in together.

After a year and a half, we married.

Those were extraordinarily happy years.

I can honestly say that I had never before experienced such long-lasting happiness across almost every area of my life.

Of course, sometimes when one part of life works beautifully, something else begins to fall apart.

In my case, that was my family.

After a major conflict, the family split into two sides.

My mother and siblings ended all contact with my father.

I had always been Daddy’s girl.

Mum knew very well that I would remain beside him.

And naturally my husband would stand with me.

For my father, however, the situation was devastating.

He had spent his entire life surrounded by a large family.

By the age of seventy-five, he was suddenly almost completely alone.

He had serious heart disease.

And he lived several dozen kilometres away from every other family member.

He had always distrusted conventional medicine.

Our family had a very close friend — a respected cardiologist and my younger sister’s godfather.

Even he could not persuade my father to undergo surgery.

Despite the family difficulties, my husband and I eventually felt ready to have a child.

We did not have to wait long for the little soul to arrive.

Perhaps that was not a coincidence.

We waited joyfully for our first baby.

Because I worked as a special-needs kindergarten teacher, I was classified as having a higher-risk pregnancy relatively early.

That meant I stayed home fairly soon.

As a result, I had more time to meet and talk with my father.

That was important because he struggled enormously with loneliness.

Of course, we had conflicts too.

His need for love had become immense.

I could not fill that emptiness alone.

But we always resolved our disagreements quickly.

At the beginning of June 2017, our little boy arrived.

The entire family was overjoyed.

I looked forward to the practical work of caring for him.

And I waited for the famous maternal instinct everybody talked about to suddenly switch on inside me.

It did not.

I was extremely happy about my baby.

I could see how beautiful and sweet he was.

But at first, emotionally, he still felt like a baby whom I cared for and loved.

The first days were not easy.

He suffered from colic.

That period exhausted me completely.

We barely slept.

The baby cried a lot.

And for the first time, arguments began casting shadows across the relationship between my husband and me.

We had planned not to receive visitors during the first weeks.

But my father desperately wanted to see the baby.

And he missed us too.

So we adjusted our own rules.

After one week, Dad became our son’s first visitor.

The night before was another terrible one.

I was so exhausted that until morning I considered cancelling.

In the end, I did not.

Dad arrived.

He was incredibly happy.

He loved seeing us.

He listened enthusiastically as we described the birth, those first days and everything about our little boy.

When the baby became tired, I carried him into the other room to put him to sleep.

Not long afterwards, my father said goodbye.

We agreed that we would meet again within one or two weeks.

Before leaving, he said:

“Finally my first grandchild has been born — the one with whom I can truly experience being a grandfather.”

Tears appeared in his eyes.

We kissed each other goodbye.

Then he left.

The following day, Mum called.

She said only:

“Sit down.”

I already knew what she was going to say.

The morning after our visit, my father collapsed at a railway station.

He died immediately.

His heart.

I was devastated.

I loved Dad enormously.

And the difficulties of the previous year had brought us even closer.

I wanted to be angry.

Angry at my baby because instead of sinking into grief, I still had to care for him.

Angry at my husband, who gave me one day to mourn and then, the following day, snapped at me:

Pull yourself together.

We have a one-week-old baby who needs love and care.

Preferably with a smile.

I wanted to be angry with Dad because he had refused the operation.

But I could not find anger.

Only a terrible emptiness.

Somewhere deep inside, I even left a tiny opening for the possibility that none of it was true.

Anyone who has lost someone understands what I mean.

I felt like an orphan.

I was no longer Daddy’s little girl.

I was now a parent.

A MOTHER.

I had to be strong for my baby and for my new family.

That tragedy forced me to grow up emotionally.

I had no alternative.

Later, I learned something I had not known.

---

While Dad was visiting us, when I carried the baby into the other room to put him to sleep, my husband tried one last time to persuade him to have the heart surgery.

It made no difference.

Dad already knew something we did not.

He answered only:

“Let whatever has to come, come.”

(The cover image is only an illustration.)

Professional portrait photography works best when the real person remains recognisable behind the image.

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