Memory

One of my neighbours has died recently. An acquaintance of mine asked me today about him and I recollected all I knew about him. I knew Mr. Little Feather (this is the actual translation of his name- yeah, I know it is very picturesque...)only from our encounters on the apartment block stairs. He and his wife moved only a few years ago here at the suggestion of their daughter who lives nearby. He was the only one doing errands for them, so we used to meet often. He was always wearing a suit and an old-fashioned hat so his silhouette was easily recognizable in the distance. His slightly leaned back didn't diminish the elegant posture of his body. He seemed to have a special smile and tone for everybody. His attention directed in equal measure towards the teenagers playing around the building and the busy adults passing him by. Seeing him, you had to stop to talk for a bit even if you were in a hurry.  He had that calm, wise demeanor of people who know too much about about life and consider it a pleasure that has to be relished in a certain pace.
What I liked most about him was that he was a character who seemed to represent all I knew and imagined about the generation who lived between the two world wars in Romania. And he was exactly that! He was a man raised in that "decadent" era inspired by the French culture. He was an educated well-read man, well over what we call educated nowadays, who knew how to speak with everybody without making you feel different. I say this because I know too many people who think that they are too educated to lower themselves to talk normally with less educated ones or the ones they consider inferior as social status.
He married a much younger woman, but a very beautiful and elegant one. And he respected her too much to ask her to work. He considered her too delicate even for house chores, so he did everything...even in his last days when he wasn't feeling well. They were married for more than 70 years. Imagine...to be married to someone so long. They must have known each other each breath, better than themselves. And they had so much respect for each other. This must be the secret for their successful life together. I remember I saw the same think, the same kind of relationship between my grandparents. They used to address each other with Mr... and Mrs.... and always wait for the other when they had to decide something.
This reminds me of  my grand- grand father. He was a fairy-tale character in my childhood. I used to jump around when I heard that we were visiting him. I, and everybody in the family, no matter the age, enjoyed enormously his war stories. Even when he told us the same story, he told it in a different way which made you discover other details in the places and characters he recollected. Even now, when I watch a war documentary, I fill the gaps with all his characters and events. He was a soldier in both World Wars and fought side by side the Germans and Russians. He put the foundations for my the stereotypes I have about these people. At the end he was taken prisoner and taken to Siberia, from where he returned, on foot of course, to his village safe and sound to raise three children and many grandchildren.
I know I jumped from one man to another, but for me they all represent the same thing- an era when people learned to respect life and each other, in a hard way. I am glad that we don't have to go through those hardships, but I realise also that my generation takes life too easier, too superficial and I know we are missing something. I think people feel the void somehow bu they don't know what is missing from their lives. I would like people to feel how valuable their life is and that they have to make it worth living by doing important, significant things without being in life or death situations. I know that sufferance wakes some of them up, but there are not enough and many of them don't understand the lesson. I hope no conflagration will be needed to make this world's population feel alive again. I say this because I see a kind of restlessness, itch that exists in people. It seems that while the generations fed up with war faded away, as it happened with my grand-grandfather, grandparents and neighbour, the newer generations tend to "forget" of reinterpret what happened at the last conflagrations and think with greater ease at a war as a way in which they can leave their mark on the world. People have such a short memory...We are too stubborn and proud to let history, the past generations teach us something about ourselves, our nature.