12.1 Tragedy

Petar was always in a good mood, full of different ideas how to reach a certain meditation state and how to find a short meditative procedure that would enable each therapist to quickly and successfully adopt esoteric techniques. He gladly discussed with me different topics. We got along great, because we were born in almost identical coastal towns. He was born in Zaton, finished high school in Dubrovnik and continued studies in Zagreb and Ljubljana, while I did all that in Kotor and continued in Ljubljana. We often discussed sailing, as well as paranormal events, about which many stories existed in our region. We thought that no unsolved cases happened in the seashore regions, except that the coastal inhabitants were once pirates who, in order to hide their misdeeds, fabricated different scenes and spread terrible stories, which other inhabitants considered to be miracles. Petar was acquainted with many esoteric techniques and achieved top results in those disciplines. He was especially fond of foretelling the future from tarot cards, yi-jing, runes, and each piece of his advice was full of wise proposals. Only few people knew about his broad esoteric knowledge, because he did not show off with it due to the fact that he lived in the time of communism, when the society did not understand such people.

Petar lived with his wife in Celje. They had a son and a daughter. He owned a private company, while she worked in the company Cinkarna Celje, where she dedicated her life to the management of one of the sections. After changing several jobs, Petar founded a company for sale and assembling of electronic devices. His wife was a reserved person and lived a modest life, while Petar was socially active and out of home much of the time. In the upbringing of their children, relationship in society and environment, as well as for neighbours and friends, they were a harmonised couple and constituted a reasonable and intellectual family. Just like other couples, they had mutual quiet arrangements and agreements that enabled them to live under one roof, but separate lives. They lived alone, because their children became adults. The son owned his own company and lived in Ljubljana with his partner, with whom he had two children, while their daughter was married abroad, pretty far from home and still had no children. The basic agreement Petar had with his wife was about their mutual care for children, his payment of the loans for the holiday house, payment of current expenses in the apartment and regular purchase of food, while his wife had to pay other expenses and save some money in the case a car was needed or a weeding was to be organised and the like.

In her fifty-fifth year of age, Petar’s wife got breast cancer, although she was never seriously ill until that time. Medical examination showed that she needed an urgent surgery and, therefore, the surgeons at the oncology policlinic in Ljubljana amputated her left breast. In the beginning, it seemed that she defeated the illness, but after several months, the illness returned and serious difficulties appeared. Less then a year passed, when doctors at the oncology department of the policlinic in Ljubljana ascertained that the disease could not be cured and sent her home. Her wish was not to go to the hospital, where she would only be lying down, but to be with her husband in their apartment. The illness took a long time. Petar hardly coped with numerous obligations in relation to his severely sick wife, but he wanted to fulfil her wish. He rarely had any help, except for a friend who was a doctor and offered her a bed in the gynaecology department of the hospital, but Petar refused. After three years of severe illness, his wife became so weak that he drove her to the hospital in Celje and informed the family about it. The next day, it was at the end of October, she died in her sleep.

The doctor, who was beside her until her death, could not believe that someone could take care alone of such a difficult patient for three years. Petar was completely exhausted, but was brave and did not show the exhaustion, because his strength was preserved by the last wife’s wishes, which he fulfilled: she stayed with him in the apartment until the rest of her life. Her wish was also to be cremated and buried with church rituals and close family members on the graveyard in her native town, Odranci near Murska Sobota. She was buried there. Petar set up a monument, arranged the grave and frequently visited it. It could be seen that Petar lived through something very deep: he was silent for years, always rushing, and reacted to and answered everything without putting much effort into it. He was my friend, so I wanted to put an end to it. I told him that I knew how hard times he lived through. That could only be understood by someone who experienced similar things. After a short hesitation, he said that almost ten years passed from the day his wife died, but he still had bitterness in his heart and a load on his mind due to three unpleasant things he experienced when she was dying. He defined those three unpleasant things as treacherous behaviour of the medical staff at the oncology clinic, vultures among the close family and family tragedy.

Petar was so small that they did not notice him.