Death of my father

My father, Bohdan Dembinski, died today aged 96. Active to the end. Less than three months ago he was in Warsaw for the 75th anniversary of the Uprising, in which he took part. Below: on 31 July 2019, outside the tenement on ulica Łucka 16 where he'd spent the first three years of his life.

Below: my father laying a single flower at the grave of his brother Józef, who died during the Uprising at the age of 19.

A few weeks ago, my father was telling me of a dream he'd had that night - his brother Józio had survived the war and had made it to London, where he lived with his family. But they worshipped in a different Polish church to the one where we did. One Sunday, my father drove Józio to that other church, dropped him off, then drove back to our church. And then he realised that the clocks had just gone back for autumn and that Józio would be waiting outside that church for an hour! My father was in a quandary - should he drive back to Józio, or just leave him?

This dream felt so real, he said... Maybe in a parallel universe, Józio did survive the Uprising and lived in London after the war, and we'd had an uncle and aunt and cousins.

Somewhere soon, a little boy will be born. He will have anomalous memories, strange familiarities of things of which he cannot know - Poland in the 1920s and 1930s, the Nazi invasion and occupation of Warsaw; the Uprising; post-war London, austerity, the happy years from the 1950s to a new Millennium and then a strange souring of societies... He will want to return to another place and another time.

UPDATE 14 MAY 2021: I have this dream: "A festyn or odpust; there are many people milling around, stands selling sweets and toys... A small baby boy, about 18 months old. He is running around, curious about everything and energetic. Dziadzio is patiently explaining things to him - a bicycle, a puddle - and here, the boy is thinking that he has emerged from out of water (memories of birth?); we are talking to him about his toys that he's playing with. I get the feeling that the boy is physically small for his age. Clouds are getting darker, rain is due. We move indoors, into a galeria handlowa (Galeria KEN in Ursynów or Galeria Ursynów on Al. KEN?)." In the dream there's a posh house on the skarpa, but we don't live there - visiting friends? a rich banker, maybe. Although this is not happening in the action, I can tell the following things about the boy. His mother works - she has a well-paid job in a foreign corporation (maybe the bank where the owner of the posh house lives, although the family lives in a typical Ursynów flat). She is active in politics and has been in the Strajk Kobiet protests. His father stays home and looks after him. Only after I wake up does this occur to me that this might be a signal that Dziadzio had reincarnated - that his consciousness resides within the body of a boy living in Ursynów! Certainly felt like it! Look for him among boys born in November 2019

More posts about my father here.

My father's death leaves me orphaned at the age of 62.

This time two years ago
Recent Jeziorki update

This time three years ago:
Autumn in Jeziorki

This time four years ago:
A driving ban for developers and architects

This time five years ago:
Do you keep coming back, or do you seek the new?

This time six years ago:
In praise of Retro design

This time seven years ago:
First snowfall in Warsaw 

This time eight years ago:
Of cycles, economic and human 

This time nine years ago:
Why didn't I read this before? Grapes of Wrath

This time ten years ago:
Małopolska from the train

This time 11 years ago:
Grading ul. Poloneza