On the death of cousin Paweł

As this note is automatically posted I am about to depart from Jelenia Góra back to Warsaw after my cousin’s funeral held yesterday. I learnt about his sudden death on Thursday evening, yet I was not shell-shocked…

Paweł died aged 43 on Tuesday, 23 January 2024. He was survived by a mother, a wife and two children.

He was the only son of Ciocia Asia, my mother’s cousin who I first met in 2009. During that holidays we also got to know Paweł, his wife Agnieszka and their daughter (aged 4 then). Around that time despite the distance between our part of the family, the relationship got quite intense. In November 2013 Wujek Mietek, Ciocia Asia’s husband, died from cancer. Soon after the second child of Paweł and Agnieszka was born and they bought a plot near Jelenia Góra and built a house there.

I last visited them in their still newly-built home in June 2019. With Ciocia Asia I last met last March, during late-winter skiing holidays.

In early January 2024 Paweł’s wall on Facebook was crying for help. Online I found out Agnieszka threw him out of their house and they were about to divorce. I was distasted by him washing their dirty linen in public. I remember talking to my mother and fearing he would take an unwanted ultimate step in his despair. My mother talked to Ciocia Asia last week. Paweł was home down with COVID-19.

On Thursday evening Agnieszka posted an obituary on her facebook profile. My first thought was he had taken away his life. Paweł was a well-known teacher and a sport coach in Jelenia Góra so the news on his departure were published in local news sites. Reading some of the comments made me want to puke… Anonymous people either blamed his wife or asked how many time he had been vaccinated. In order to cut out all the speculations, Agnieszka informed on the heart attack as a cause of death. The problem with the heart was most probably an aftermath of a car accident Paweł had had in November 2023, during which the airbags did not go off. Since that time he had only stronger pains in his chest and took only stronger painkillers. Most probably his heart did not resist increasing dosage of medicines, COVID-19 and the divorce-related stress.

I feel terribly sorry for Ciocia Asia, for Paweł’s daughter, aged 18, who will be taking high-school leaving exams in May and his son, aged nearly 10. They are now experiencing a triple trauma – caused by the divorce, the sudden death and people gossiping on the suicide as the cause of death.

Fate and justice at times go separate ways. Balancing at the edge of chaos sometimes involves having a brush on death and getting carried away...