[YEAR 7!] Quit our jobs, sold our home, gone riding...

joeyabisa

Adventurer
Hi Gene, haven't been on here for awhile. Man, I'm sorry about Neda's mom. I hope the best for her and everyone involved. Still diggin your adventure and as always your pictures and words keep us coming back for more.
 
Updated from http://www.RideDOT.com/rtw/168.html

The phone rings in the middle of the night. Bad news never waits for the morning. Ten days after the surgery to remove the tumour, Neda' mom passed away in the night. Her body was too weak and exhausted to recover. The family was devastated. After getting a surgery date and having the procedure performed successfully, we had made plans to move Neda's mom to an assisted living facility and start her rehabilitation. We had not planned on making funeral arrangements.

i-jz6KN4V-L.jpg

Neda's mom, Mirjana as a small child

It took a long time to get over the grief and start the task of cleaning out Mirjana's apartment. We looked through some old pictures that Neda's mom had kept and I wondered at the life of a person who I mostly knew through stories told through Neda's eyes. The pictures and the stories that came out because of it revealed a bit more of the person that I never got to know very well.

Mirjana was born 1949 in Montenegro, which back then was a part of former Yugoslavia. The family stayed there a few years before moving to Istria. Her dad was the chief mechanical engineer aboard a ship that sailed all over the world, only coming back to be with the family for a month out of every year.

i-TVLhqBZ-L.jpg

Nona, Mirjana and her brother outside the Hotel Riviera in Pula

i-4LqBhRP-XL.jpg

Mirjana as a young woman aboard her dad's ship

Nona told us that Mirjana was a quiet girl growing up, and that she always had her head buried in a book somewhere. Neda nodded her head at this and added that not much had changed throughout the years.

i-brJbrNk-XL.jpg

As a young bride

i-vKBhM8M-L.jpg

Mirjana and her two girls, Goga and Neda

One of my favorite stories that Neda told me about her childhood was of her playing in the garden outside the apartment. When she got hungry, instead of coming back inside, she would yell to her mom up in the kitchen, "Mama, I'm hungry!" Mirjana would then make sandwiches and drop them through the window down to Neda so she could continue playing! That story always makes me smile.

i-8cdqXG2-L.jpg

Mirjana and Goga

i-PMxBZtN-L.jpg

Outside in the garden of the apartment

i-NZHPKcR-L.jpg

Neda's birthday surrounded by her mom and grandparents

We looked through a lot of old birthday pictures and slides of Neda and Goga throughout the years. I noted that as the sisters grew older, the exact same chocolate cake appeared in front of them in every photo. Neda explained that that was the only birthday cake her mom knew how to make! :) I thought that was funny, like seeing the same family member in photos that never seems to age over the years. Dorian Gray cake!

i-ZFHtHKm-L.jpg

Goga's wedding day.
Mirjana liked to call them all "The Three Muskeeters"


While in Pula, Goga found an old memory book from her elementary school years. It's an album that all your friends and family write messages or doodle in to capture a point in time, kind of like a yearbook. She showed me one of the pages that her mom had free-hand copied a picture of a Sarah Kay drawing. She had totally forgotten about it. It was very artistic and even as a copy, showed a lot of talent. Goga is an artist herself and it was nice confirmation seeing where she got her talent from.

i-DxSWMTn-XL.jpg

Attending Tea's annual birthday party at Goga's in-laws place

i-mp2WdkK-L.jpg

After moving to Canada, Neda would visit her mom in Pula every couple of years

i-fnV8mxs-XL.jpg

Mirjana in her favorite chair buried in a book

i-JpJtBdk-XL.jpg

Mirjana couldn't attend our wedding in Toronto,
so we held a reception in Croatia as well


Because Neda's mom didn't speak English, whenever she would call us in Toronto to speak to Neda, our conversations were very short. I learned how to say "Hello" and "Neda's not at home right now" in Croatian to make our calls easier for her. While staying in Neda's mom's apartment the last couple of months, I saw all the How-To-Speak-English books and dictionaries on the shelf. She had been trying to learn English just so that she could communicate to me. That was very touching!

i-WDP2c4q-L.jpg

Three generations!

i-37shStc-L.jpg

Lunch with the girls

i-gPGpXSp-L.jpg

As always, the girl and her book

It was nice sharing stories with all of Mirjana's family, and hearing how she touched each one of their lives in ways small and large. She was very much loved by her family. She will be missed greatly.
 

Herbie

Rendezvous Conspirator
Gene and Neda, I'm so very sorry to read about your loss.

There is nothing I can say except "Thank You", for sharing everything with us. Mirjana will be in my thoughts today.
 

Guri

Explorer
Neda and Gene... I'm so sorry for your loss.

What a nice pictures and memories, Thanks to share that moments!
 

profdlp

Adventurer
Very sad news. I am praying that your grief will be shortened and that the happy memories of her will fill the void.
 
Updated from http://www.RideDOT.com/rtw/169.html

IMG_1935-L.jpg

Funeral for Neda's mom

The last couple of weeks have been very busy, arranging Mirjana's funeral and getting all of affairs settled. I wished I could have helped, but the language barrier meant that it was faster for Neda and Goga to do all the work themselves. I stayed with Tea and we watched movies and played video games together instead.

DSC_2461-L.jpg

I taught Tea how to play the guitar. She was inseparable with the instrument after! :)

DSC_2408-L.jpg

A night at the drive-in

Neda's always told me that growing up her parents never took any pictures of her. Since she was a younger sibling, there were tons of pictures of her older sister. Neda recounted bitterly, "I guess the novelty of having kids wore off after the first child..." Marcia, Marcia, Marcia...

While cleaning out her mom's apartment, we found a treasure trove of slides and we fired up an ancient, rickety projector (all it was missing was a hand-crank) and made an evening out of it with the rest of the family. There were *TONS* of pictures of Neda! Seems her dad had transitioned from making photos to making slides during Neda's childhood, and since Goga was going through her teenage Too-Cool-To-Hang-With-The-Family phase, all there were were slides of Neda hiking, Neda playing with the dog, Neda in the garden, Neda by the marina...

Her entire view of her childhood was changed overnight!

fair-L.jpg

Rediscovered childhood memories: Neda at the fair

DSC_0923-L.jpg

Bullitt the blue sky

Dog Update: Nera didn't stay with us for very long before her cuteness factor scored her a permanent home. I missed the soft patter of her feet on the kitchen floor while I was typing up blog entries on the computer. :(

One afternoon, Neda came home from grocery shopping and announced, "Gene, we have a visitor!" Normally that was my cue to put some pants on. But into the kitchen came another black, furry four-legged friend! "I found him by the marina, he almost got hit by a car. Can we keep him?" I looked at the dog collar around his neck and replied, "We should probably try to find his owner?" "Yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll do that too..."

We put out a notice on all the social media websites that Neda was hooked into. There were many replies reporting sightings all over Pula. In the meantime, since there wasn't a nametag on his collar, I got to name him! I called him Bullitt. :) He was very different from Nera. Not quite as smart, but rambunctious and mischievous. He wanted to sleep on our bed and couldn't seem to remember our home when we went out for a walk. He kept tugging on the leash even when we were outside our apartment. Dumb dog.

It was over a day when the phone rang insistently. A worried voice on the other end meekly said, "Um, I think you have my dog". Neda replied, "If you want to see him again, meet us at the park in 30 minutes". I think she wanted to add, "bring small unmarked bills and make sure no one follows you". Neda wasn't going to give up yet another dog without a fight!

Bullitt's owner met his dognappers later that afternoon, and Bullitt walked over to him when he was called by his real name, Max. Seems that Max gets let out every day to roam the streets and he always come home at night. He lived right behind our apartment which was why he was always straining at the leash when we were coming home. We totally kidnapped this little guy from his daily routine! When Max didn't show up last night, his owner frantically searched the Internet and found our posting. He seemed very relieved to see his dog again.

While walking away dogless, Neda whispered to me, "I think Max would have been better off with us. Did you see how hesitant he was leaving us?" I replied, "Yeah, I think it's called Stockholm Syndrome..."

DSC_1575-L.jpg

The pebbly beaches of Lungo Mare

Lungo Mare is a scenic, windy road that follows the shoreline. Cyclists, joggers and strollers take in the natural beauty of the area. The rocky coast is strewn with the occasional pebbly beaches along the bays, which are very popular with both locals and tourists. It's where Neda used to spend her summers, sun tanning on the rocks with her friends.

IMG_9262-L.jpg

Having a drink with fellow Croatian bikers!

We have motorcycle visitors in Pula! Neda is member of a Croatian motorcycle forum online and we've been posting our blog reports there. When they heard that we were in the country, Danko and Nives rode into town to pay us a visit. It was really nice meeting other bikers and and we got some great tips about riding in Croatia. They were headed to Albania in a few weeks, we were very interested in that! We really miss our bikes, which were probably somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean right now.

DSC_1508-L.jpg

Wishing farewell to Danko and Nives

DSC_1042-L.jpg

Salsa dancers in front of the Temple of Augustus

DSC_1643-L.jpg

3D-Mapping

The tourism board of Pula puts on many events throughout the city in the summer. One of the more interesting ones is are a series of short 10-15 minute computer animations projected onto the old buildings in the Forum.

DSC_1600-XL.jpg

Taking a shortcut through the dark alleyways of Pula

IMG_1998-L.jpg

Cranes of the shipyard in the distances as the sun sets on the shores of this old town
 

Aubrey

Observer
Hi Gene and Neda

Sorry to hear about your loss. May the sorrow fade and the memories multiply.

Cheers from Africa

Aubrey
 

Forum statistics

Threads
185,539
Messages
2,875,662
Members
224,922
Latest member
Randy Towles
Top