Celina & Michał

We fight.

The thought that came to me today after the hospital visit: maybe I have something like ±40 years of life left.
Sounds like a lot, but really it isn’t.

Because if I look at it differently - that’s only 40 springs, 40 autumns, 40 winters and 40 times the summer sun on my face… suddenly it doesn’t sound so generous.

I’m off to seize the day… first a slice of cake, coffee, orange juice, and then I’ll take a moment to decide whether to conquer Mount Everest or go and live with the penguins in Antarctica.

Sometimes you have to be the one who holds on.
When the other one is getting lost and fading.
To be the light while she goes out.

This song - “I Won’t Crumble With You If You Fall” - is close to me now. Tom Jones recorded it after the death of his wife, who also died of lung cancer, like mine. Today I understand every word - it isn’t a song, it’s a scream for survival.

Listen

Tom Jones · I Won’t Crumble With You If You Fall

Celina and I met at university and were together for almost 30 years. She was the kind of woman any man would want by his side - warm, traditional, utterly dependable. I could count on her without limit. She took care of me every single day. She gave me calm, strength and faith, and I tried to be her rock - like a lighthouse, a fixed point that doesn’t go dark even on the blackest nights.

Then came cancer. It was hard to believe, and for a long time I couldn’t come to terms with it. The illness made itself felt year after year, striking harder and harder. Fighting, pushing back, moments of hope - and then came that one final blow - like the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Fast, total, inhumanly painful. After it, nothing stayed the same.

I was with her until the very end. I paid with my health, with sleepless nights and with a fear that cannot be described. Caring for someone at such a time is an enormous challenge - it’s easy to fall apart watching the suffering and the helplessness. But for me there was no other way than total devotion. She deserved everything, and I never spared any love for her.

When she left, I was alone - shattered by the storm of the last months. But I know one thing - she would never want me to fall apart. She always wanted me to stand tall. And so it will be.

Even though you’re not here, my little one - you will always be with me, and I will be here for you, because I know that’s what you would want.

To love is to endure.
Even when everything falls apart.

Thank you to everyone who helped me through these hard days!

Silence… before the storm.

Tomorrow will be a day no one would ever want to live through.
A day full of grief, longing and silence.

Today I want to share a song with you that, for me, expresses what is hard to put into words - “Goodbye My Lover” by James Blunt.

Listen

James Blunt · Goodbye My Lover

This melody carries the pain of emptiness, but also the memory of a love that will never leave.

Let this night be a time for farewell, for memories and a quiet prayer.

I was driving to my own wife’s funeral.
I knew it. And yet I couldn’t believe it.

The ordinary world slid past the window. People at bus stops. Lights in windows. Someone carrying a Christmas tree.
Two days to Christmas Eve.

Everything was happening next to me. As if I were acting in a film where someone had got the casting wrong - and I had been given the lead.

I walked with my family. I saw relatives, friends, mates. Someone shook my hand. Someone hugged me. Someone said something.
Some people offered me their condolences, and I didn’t even know who they were.
I nodded. I don’t remember a single word.

My body was there. I - not quite.
I was floating somewhere above it all, as in a dream I was about to wake from.

Her photograph stood nearby. She looked at me from it the way she always had.
And my wreath. On the ribbon: “To my beloved Wife - Michał”.
I read those words and it didn’t reach me that they were from me.

I was waiting for someone to say: “Stop. Cut.”
For me to go home, and she would be there.

No one said it.

Only when the first handful of earth struck the coffin did the film break.
That sound was real.
The realest sound I have ever heard.

Legs like cotton wool.
Throat clenched.
Heart - an explosion.
My mind gone somewhere.
Furious. No strength left.

Madness.

So many candles. Among them, Celina.

Almost a year has passed. The emotions that were with me have grown much quieter. They walk beside me, but they don’t take control.

I even have the feeling that this experience gives me strength and the will to live.
Strange.

Coming back from the cemetery, I felt I had left someone very important to me there.

But I did what I could. And though not everything is as it should be - some of it I had no influence over, some of it I wasn’t aware of.
So, all in all, it is as it was meant to be.

As long as we remember - we are.