A Christmas sheep

Today the weather is bitterly cold. It is the coldest day of the year so far. The freezing rain bites through my clothes when I struggle to reach the grocery shop, balancing on the icy sidewalk. 

It is Christmas again. I am going to buy a Christmas tree. It is time to be joyous, to celebrate with the family and reminisce. 

Christmas has not always been a holiday. Back in the 1960s we did not celebrate Xmas. It was not encouraged to celebrate Christmas because religion was "opium for masses", according to Marx. Christmas was humbug. Marx stole the Christmas.

Fifty years ago we used to celebrate the New Year. The gifts, that children received for New Year in 1965, were humble. People were not allowed to start any businesses because only the "bourgeois" amass money, according to Marx and Engels and humble, working people, do not. 

My elementary school teacher even

forbade me to draw sheep, grazing fresh grass, when we were drawing the spring scenery. The sheep reminded to much of the Bible.

Dutifully I erased every sheep in a picture, wandering what it was all about. In the years to come I was offered the insight into a bigger picture.

It was my aunt's message during the Christmas time in 1967, informing my father, that a snitch reported him to the authority. Father did not agree with the government killing 3000 people after the WW2. And he expressed his opinion to a group of "friends", which was not a wise idea. At once, a staged court process followed, father was almost sent to jail for something he did not do and was saved by my aunt who knew some useful people on the strategic positions.

The government considered my father a suspicious person ever since he was born, because he was a son of his father.

And my grandfather was considered a very suspicious person, almost an intellectual.

Grandpa played a trumpet in the King Peter's Army and he could orchestrate any tune for the whole orchestra. He could compose music. This is an intellectual endeavour and highly suspicious per se.

Unfortunately, when a neighbor came around Christmas time in 1944 to gather donations for the partisans, my grandfather couldn't give her anything because he had nothing to give. He became persona non grata and was under surveillance ever since. He was reprimanded again and again for not giving the money to the partisans until my grandma put a stop to it and said: "Pretend to be dumb". And my grandfather followed the advice and played intellectually challenged person and he did it so well that everybody believed it. He was cautious, however, not to overdo it because he could be hospitalized and put on psychiatric medication. It happened to some citizens and their health was destroyed permanently. 

Grandfather stayed poor all his life because only politically correct people gained well paid posts. He put to test the Maslow's theory of survival and could never advance past the first three postulates.

Our country was famous for having the highest number of "suicides" per capita in the world. That was until the government realized that the country has gained a bad reputation. And that was the moment when people started to die from natural causes.

It would be absolutely wrong to say that someone helped the people to die in a natural way. On the contrary, everybody did everything possible not to help.

For example: after a stroke was my bedridden mother kept in an institution, with deep skin ulcers, no antibiotics and no specialist's treatment. My father was dying from a cancer at the same time. He suffered tremendous pains. He was not admitted to the hospital because according to the hospital doctor, people with cancer could not be admitted to the hospital.

And the medical staff at the nursery home, could not provide a painkiller infusion for my father, because they were not allowed to do so. 

It is very painful to be deemed an incorrect citizen.

And particularly unsettling for me, considering that I am my father's daughter and my grandfather's granddaughter.

For a long time I couldn't approach the City Hospital without feeling of nausea by remembering the pain my mother suffered while rotting to the bones and a sweet odour of Pseudomonas permeating the air.

And the screaming of my father when a surgeon cut into his emaciated feet to remove the gangrenous tissue. Without anesthesia, of course.

I was waiting in front of the surgery in the waiting room with forty other patients. Nobody moved, nobody said a word, the eyes of those people getting bigger and bigger every minute.

Recently the health care system has been upgraded.. The euthanasia law has been passed before Christmas. Sick people will have an option to die and finally stop complaining over pains. A patient would simply sign a document, claiming a death wish and a medical doctor will kill him . And even more, the government is promising to extend the euthanasia law to psychiatry ward as well. There's a lot of people with psychiatric and mental issues in this country. The euthanasia law does not clarify, however, if the heirs could sign a death wish document instead of their elderly frail relatives.

It has been eighty years since the Enlightenment introduced the communism to this country. This epoch included fifty years of atheism. The ten commandments had no merits and no meaning. There was no striving for beauty, harmony, righteousness, integrity and honesty. Equality, Freedom and Brotherhood were only the words in a history textbook.

The nation was left alone in the empty void. There was only one request: loyalty to the party. These eighty years without God have changed the people. There is an omnipotent intrinsic need prevailing in this country, to hurt and destroy another human being. All my attempts to leave the country have been unsuccessful. I have to live amongst these people, socially isolated, poor and with a premonition of a dark future. My family is long gone....

Today is the coldest day of the year. My nose is red and my fingers are blue.

The history has made the whole circle.

It is once again acceptable to celebrate Christmas. Maybe even to believe in God.

Today I will think about my family. I will try to remember their voices and their faces.

I will buy a Christmas tree.

I will attend the holy Mass.

I will sit by the window and look at the snowflakes.

And I will draw a white sheep.

Merry Christmas to you.