My name is Halina. I entered the Krawczyk family as a 24-year-old girl, in a white dress, with a bouquet of wildflowers, and with such faith in marriage that today I sometimes wish I could embrace that self and whisper, “Hang in there, child. Life doesn’t always ask if you’re ready.”
My husband, Paweł, was the youngest son of Stanisław Krawczyk. We lived in the Subcarpathian region, in an old cottage near Łańcut, with a wooden veranda, two apple trees by the fence, and a painting of Our Lady of Częstochowa above my father-in-law’s bed.
Stanisław Krawczyk was a tough man. Not the kind to pat you on the back or say “thank you” for every little thing. He spoke little, looked straight, and when he entered a room, even his adult sons automatically straightened their backs.
An old, dark brown-bound Bible always lay by his bed. Its corners were worn, its pages yellowed. Between them, he kept a holy image and a dried boxwood branch from Palm Sunday.
“Faith without works is dead, Halinka,” he said hoarsely as I handed him the water. “Words are cheap. Actions cost money.”
After our wedding, his health began to fail. First his blood pressure. Then his legs. Then his heart. Then came the doctors, the pills, the sleepless nights, and that terrible weakness that doesn’t kill you instantly but takes you away piece by piece.
Someone had to lift him. Someone had to spoon-feed him. Someone had to change his shirts, wash his sheets, lubricate his legs, and sit beside him when he couldn’t sleep, staring at the ceiling as if arguing with God himself.
That “someone” became me.
Not because someone explicitly told me to. In families, the hardest things are often not ordered. They’re simply placed silently on the shoulders of whoever doesn’t turn around first.
The eldest son, Andrzej, lived in Warsaw. He visited infrequently, but with flair: with an expensive cake, a phone in his hand, and words about “our dad” spoken loudly enough for the neighbors to hear.
The middle one, Mirosław, lived in Krakow. He would say goodbye before each painting, kiss his father on the forehead, and after an hour, say that “his heart couldn’t stand this atmosphere.”
Paweł was good. He helped when he could. But he worked on renovations, often traveling on assignments, returning late, and the real burden fell on one hand.
On mine.
I left my job at a small embroidery studio in Rzeszów. I once dreamed of opening my own crafts room: tablecloths, napkins, shirts, old Subcarpathian patterns, just like the ones from our grandmothers’ trunks. But dreams have a way of quietly folding away in the closet when someone is sick at home.
There were nights that I remember physically.
