A painful secret

Berzey's András Diary Book 2024

4th October 2024

Today, after doing the weekend shopping in a nearby town and fixing the battery of my phone, I hurried home and had a quick lunch, as I intended to go to the nearby Catholic cemetery where my parents were resting. I wanted to weed and plant flowers on their graves so that everything would be beautiful for the upcoming All Saints' Day.

I lost my mother a year ago and my father is buried here, he has been gone for seven years, from where no one has ever returned from, into eternity.

At noon, the bells of the local St Ignatius Church tolled throughout Europe and Hungary, in memory of King Matthias' supreme commander in chief, János Hunyadi, who in 1456 repelled the Turkish army from Nándorfehérvár, saving the Kingdom of Hungary and other kingdoms across Europe, and halting further Ottoman expansion.

A soft, gentle breeze whispered in the cemetery, the sun tasting bright on this October afternoon, I was sweating as I did the earthwork, digging up the weeds, turning the soil where I wanted to plant the flowers. I planted three yellow and three purple forget-me-nots and two rock plants, one burgundy and one white. Yes, I had to kneel to reach the centre of the grave, the clay soil of the grave covered my knees and both hands when I was planting, but I didn't mind, as I knew the result would be beautiful.

When I had finished planting, I carried water from a nearby well to the flowers and placed two white carnations and a bunch of chrysanthemums in a vase between the headstones. When everything was ready, I spread a bag of mulch, or shredded bark, in the empty spaces between the plants so that there would be no chance for weeds to grow in the grave this year or next March.

I was busy with work because I was expecting my brother and his family for dinner in the late afternoon, which I wanted to prepare in a sophisticated way, like a good guestkeeper. I wanted to give them roast chicken breast with chips, rice bait and pickles, and I managed to cook everything.

On October 3, 2023, I woke up early in my room and had time to get comfortably ready and walk to the nearby St. Ignatius Church for Mass. I got there in time and hurried to the sacristy before Mass, wanting to signal to Father Francis that I wanted to go to confession after Mass.

From the sacristy, an old wooden door led to the confession room, a surviving part of the medieval chapel once built on the site of the church, which was consecrated around 1235 AD during the reign of King Béla IV.

Father Francis asked us what we wanted to confess. I replied that it was partly for my failure to attend Sunday Mass for six months, although I was not too busy during that period, but that I also had a heavier burden on my shoulders.

Between 2016 and 2018 I was in hospital for an extended treatment for a hereditary genetic disease, which required special treatment and a sterile environment for 24 months, which is how long the drug therapy took. I lived two years away from my family in an institution in Budapest, the capital of Hungary, in almost total isolation. My home was a hundred and twenty kilometres away, at the northern tip of Lake Balaton, in Balatonfűzfő.

On July 25, 2017, my father, Géza Berzey died suddenly in the family house, he had an irreparable heart attack in his room, and even the quick medical help could not save his life, my mother was desperate. A week later, I could not travel to his funeral, because my doctors did not allow it, they considered it too great a risk and I accepted it with difficulty.

My mother was left alone in the large family house with a garden, which was ringing with emptiness.

On 17 March 2018, my doctors discharged me, I left the Rehabilitation Institute cured, and my brother drove me home, where I was soon in my Mother's arms, a great weight lifted off my heart, I was so relieved.

A few years passed and my mother and I lived together in peace, free from strife, a little poor, but happy. My mother's modest pension and the income I earned from designing web pages helped us to live decently, so we were not destitute, we could make ends meet.

I often took my mother on excursions to the nearby lake, to the shores of Lake Balaton and spa towns such as Balatonfüred and Alsóőrs, Csopak, Lovas and Paloznak. At that time my mother could walk well, but her left knee started to hurt from time to time. Later it got much worse and the excursions became less frequent.

In the evenings, I would often call my mother upstairs to my room, where I would use my music equipment to search the internet for her favourite hits from the 1960s and 1970s and play them for her, while I would play and record the next track and sometimes sing along, although I didn't have absolute pitch or musical training, but I could mostly hit the right notes. So I gave him a little home karaoke show. She liked the songs that reminded her of her youth, like Kati Kovács, Pál Széchy or Zsuzsi Mary.

Years and seasons followed each other, I worked mostly at home in front of my computer, because my illness and special medication made me not very suitable for a commuting job and job providers were not very happy about a person with a disability, there was still a lot of prejudice, intolerance and prejudice in Hungary.

At the end of 2023, after the Christmas holidays, she started to say strange things sometimes, like who am I because she doesn't know me, and where is her younger son, Andrew, and should I call him immediately?

"But Mom, I'm Andrew, your son, don't you remember?"

"Take out your ID card, I'll look at your photo. Yes, I see it's you", and then he calmed down for a while.

I have had similar problems on other occasions and I have noticed that my mother's memory is deteriorating at an accelerating rate, she may have incipient dementia. Others have said that this is unfortunately a very common disease of old age, there is not much of a cure, but the process can be slowed down if the patient does things that stimulate the brain, i.e. strengthen cognitive functions. In any case, the future didn't look very promising in that respect.

"My son, then tell me what is troubling your soul, do not be afraid, I am bound by the confidentiality of confession, I cannot share this with anyone."

"Father, my sin is quite significant, but I'll get into it now. On June 10, 2023, two days before my mother's 82nd birthday, we had lunch together at the white tablecloth table in our dining room. I had ordered lunch from a nearby restaurant, a roast beef with fries and a fresh, pickled salad, and we started eating. Suddenly, my mother addressed a sentence to me."

"You're not my son, you don't look like him, you're so fat, call András!"

"But Mom, I just put on a few pounds, believe me, I'm your younger son."

"That's not true," said my Mother angrily, and suddenly she stood up, the chair fell and hit the table, the plates clattered, almost broke and everything turned into a tragedy in an instant. He fell backwards and his full weight, about 72-75 kg, fell on his left side on the hard tiled floor.

I almost had no time to recover, let alone catch myself falling and suddenly I found myself saying.

"Oh my God, you must have broken your leg, how are you going to recover from this, it could take months. Why did you have to fall?"

My mother whimpered and said, "Oh, it hurts, do something, quickly, oh, me!"

I pulled myself together and looked at his leg: "Can you move it, Mum?" "No, but it hurts."

"Wait, I'll get a pillow under your head, don't move too much, I'll call an ambulance right away," I said.

I did, and the ambulance arrived in 6-7 minutes. After a great struggle, they put my mother on the stretcher, and it was not easy for two well-built paramedics, because they were inevitably hurting her."

"It's not going to be a week in hospital, he's probably got a fractured femur, it's going to be a difficult recovery, expect that," said one paramedic.

I quickly packed up Mother's things that she might need at the hospital and soon followed the ambulance to the nearby town.

Later that afternoon, after her leg was x-rayed and it was discovered that she had a fractured femur, my mother underwent surgery.

 Meanwhile, my brother Richard arrived from Budapest and after the operation, we both went to the ward to comfort him. We were allowed to visit him until 6 pm and left the hospital with a heavy heart, we still managed to ask the surgeon if the operation had succeeded and he said that everything went fine, they used strong metal screws to fix the two bone ends, nothing will be wrong, 3 weeks and he will walk with crutches again.

"What do you consider sin in this story, my son?"

"The fact that when the trouble happened, I didn't immediately reassure Mum, I practically scolded her, and I regret that to this day."

"Look, my son, you spoke rashly to your sick Mother. It is like a wound on a living tree where an iron nail has been driven. The nail can be pulled out, but the scar, even if it heals, will always remain and be visible, so in a similar case be more prudent, but I, because you sincerely repent of this, in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, absolve you and ask God to forgive you."

"Thank you, Father, this is why I prayed to God every night before going to bed, but I didn't dare to go to church. But God can forgive me, for I am not a sinless man either, but a fragile reed in the lake of life, moved by the waves of Fate."

"No one is perfect but God and his Son Jesus Christ, you see the point. In any case, man must strive for what is good, and must shed his faults and mistakes and repent of his sins to find the right path, for which God's help is indispensable, whether one is rich or poor, it does not matter here. Now go your way, my son, Andrew, and take better heed of your words, for remember that words are a dangerous weapon, especially when they come from evil mouths."

Then my soul was a little relieved and when I looked again in the afternoon at the tidy grave where two wooden crosses stood for her parents, she saw a dove descend to the top of the funeral cottage, and then her mate came and settled beside her, the cemetery was deserted, the sun was shining, and I thought, when I die, I would like to be in this grave, next to my parents, and yes, the soul will find its immortal soul, and once up there in the sky, my soul will meet theirs, who knows when in the future.

It was the first anniversary of my mother's death. Rest her in peace.