Memories of Dad

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On November 15, 1967, my dad died. I was ten years old. He was a popular Latvian writer and poet. Both my dad and mom had their lives disrupted by WW II. I was a much-loved but very late-in-life baby. Everything would have turned out better if during the 1960s they already would have had an operation to widen the arteries but they didn’t so Dad didn’t have a chance. He was a great patriot and often wished he’d be able to return to Latvia, He belonged to many Latvian organizations and as appropriate for a popular man, his funeral turned out to be right on Latvia’s National Day Saturday, November 18. He had died on a Wednesday. The church was overflowing with people. The most specific thing I remember about the day he died was that our landlords a Latvian couple were watching me downstairs while they took him away upstairs from our fifth-floor apartment. The pastor of the Latvian church came to take me upstairs. I was ten but I could tell this man was struggling with what to say to me. The apartment had a long hallway and I could hear everyone, the neighbors had gathered with Mom in the living room to the right. I went into the bedroom on the left. Right by the doorway my grandmother, mom’s mom, told me my dad was gone and she had died three years earlier. You should have seen the look on our pastor's face when I turned to him to ask “Where is my father?” and right away he knew that this ten-year-old child already knew what had happened. The photo is of me, my dad, and mom when I was 5 in a friend's garden