Let Go and Let God

Darkness, then pain, then a white, cold foreign environment...my father, little Jancsika awoke in a bed and was disoriented. Through the fog of ether, Jancsi began to recall the shiny pen he attempted to pick up, then the stinging bite on his lower right leg, as anxiety and dread surrounded him. He came to the realization that he was seriously injured and began to run thru the logic of the situation and arriving at the conclusion he was in a hospital. How did he get here? Did his Grandmother and family know where he was? What bit him?

He tried to prop up in the bed and look down at his injury. He was covered with bed sheets and wondered,  was his leg was still underneath?  

It is not clear in my memory as to how my father learned or about the details of his wound. I can only imagine the bittersweet series of discoveries he made as the doctors and nurses explained the situation. Yes, he still had his leg, a Good Samaritan brought him to the hospital after witnessing the event, that his injury was so serious that there was no guarantee that he would keep his leg, and that he had undergone a procedure to remove traces of an artillery shell from his ankle. Here he was, 9 year old Janscika, alone in the hospital, receiving the grim prognosis all by himself. He was told that it was not a good idea to look beneath the bandages as his leg had changed color and developed gangrene. The doctors went on to explain that they removed as much of the shrapnel from his leg as possible and that he would need to stay in the hospital to try and save his leg and his life.  Attempts would be made to contact his Grandmother, though Budapest was under "Siege" and the Soviet and German forces were battling for control.

Dad described the hospital he was in as a children's hospital. He described it as a small building with only a couple of floors. I am not sure if in fact it was one, but he was surrounded by injured and dying children. Some crying for their parents dead or alive, others in shock after sustaining injury, and some lucky ones with their family at their side. My father felt alone. It would be one of the times that he would recall that feeling of abandonment, but without a real way to give a word to the emptiness he harbored after being left by his mother and hardly ever seeing his father. His Grandmother, Aunt Margit and Cousin Joska were all he had. He prayed and cried and prayed and cried.

Not too long after learning of the severity of the situation, my father was told he had a visitor. He perked up. Maybe it was his Grandma, how did she know, how did she get here? Or, maybe it was his father or the priest from church? Instead, a young woman appeared whom he did not recognize. She had a familiarity about her, perhaps she was from the neighborhood and he was having trouble remembering? What he learned next would be the shock of his life. She looked at him, I imagine in a very shocked way, taking in his appearance, and the state he was in. I wonder if she marveled at how big he had gotten, and if she found herself in him. The woman would tell him she was his mother. She said that there was a rumor going around in Budapest that the hospital was going to be bombed and that he needed to leave with her at once. She briefly explained that she was sent by his grandmother as the hospital would only release him to a legal parent. It seems that his Father was nowhere to be found and that this was the only way.

The details of what happened next are a little fuzzy in my memory, but I do know that she managed to get my Father home to his Grandmother safely. She left him there as quickly as she came. My Father would only see her once more time, later in his life at church, where she did not acknowledge him.

The following events that unfolded were extraordinary. My nine year old father was home with this horrible infection. He did not have medicine or any extra bandages or the antibiotics he desperately needed to save his life. I can only imagine the pain he felt. My Grandmother, did her best to make him comfortable in the basement bunker they were in and with her old country wisdom, managed to get hold of some tomatoes. She cut them into slices and laid them directly over the wound/s and asked my Father to pray with her. Whenever the wound seeped a significant amount of infected material, she would replace with new slices.  All this as sirens roared and more raids sounded into the cold and bitter dawn of the next day.

Early the next morning, they learned that the hospital in fact was bombed and then raided. Little remained of the patients, doctor's, or anyone else that couldn't make it out in time.

Little Janscika's life would go on and his leg would be saved. I remember about fifteen years ago, taking my Dad to the hospital to have an x-ray done of his leg. He suffered from bouts of gout and was experiencing some swelling due to his weakened heart.  This particular time, they discovered some fragments floating around in his ankle. The doctor asked my father if he knew what that could be. At first, Dad was taken aback, he seemed a bit bewildered....then, knowing tears began to well up in his green eyes. My father, being the amazing story tell that he was, blinked, then cleared his throat and decided to supply a detailed accounting of the lodged shrapnel and what his grandmother did with simple tomatoes to save his leg. Looking at my Dad that day, it seems in a strange way that it was as if he saw an old friend again from the very distant past.

As I remember it, this was the only soft memory he would have of his mother, though he never really said anything bad about her. If anything, it seemed he always wondered why he was never good enough to keep, and the answer to a burning question; why had she decided to show up and save his life that day only to let him go again?