Remembering A Life

This book is my life, my parents' and my grandparents' life. A legacy for my children. And for the readers too. I did not write it because I thought my life was important in itself. I wrote it because some lives carry more than one man. They carry parents, grandparents, war, prison, communism, hunger, work, love, loss, children, failure, recovery, and the stubborn duty to go on. This book is not an attempt to make life prettier than it was. It is not written to impress, to complain, or to ask for pity. It is written to record what happened, what was inherited, what was endured, what was lost, and what remained standing. Some of it belongs to a brutal century. Some of it belongs to my family. Some of it belongs to the countries I lived in. Some of it belongs to the people I loved. Some of it belongs to the people who hurt me. But all of it became the life I had to live. I wanted my children to know where they come from. I wanted them to know the people before them. I wanted them to know that a life can be broken more than once and still continue. I wanted them to know that collapse is not the final word unless you let it be. And if this book reaches readers who never knew my family, never knew Romania, never knew the world I came from, then perhaps it will still do what it was written to do: show a life carried forward through pressure, loss, work, faith, and the refusal to stay down.