My Father's Castle . . .

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We were four children . . . I was the second girl, having one older sister and a younger sister and a brother. My father was originally educated inside the police. Right after the war, my mother also worked inside a department of the police, but stopped working as she started to take children.
I can remember, how proud my father was every day when he took on his police uniform, straighten himself at the wall and put his hands on his back, before he took off to work.
But under the war, my father got Tuberculoses and he got worse and worse until he lost his work-permit.
Many times, I woke during the night, finding the home empty with blood all over the place. I knew . . . my father had taken an attack of vomiting blood, flushing out, uncontrolled from his mouth and was taken to the hospital. I always started to wash off all the blood, so my siblings should not see it, although I was not more than about 5 / 6 years.
Many times we believed that he should die and we got used to be prepared waiting for the message that it was over.
My mother had to start working. She got a good job as an accountant, but it was hard times.
My father never got used to be the one at home and was embarrassed that he had to let my mother work and be the bread-feeder of the family.
As things got worse, and my father also took “cancer” in the small part of his lung that was still working, my parents took contact with a woman we called Aunt Inga. She was into alternative solutions of everything concerning health.
Since my father had difficult to breath, had punctuated more than three-quarter of his lungs and now also suffered from cancer, she gave him some herbs that should help him to breath. At that time, it was no medication yet for Tuberculosis.
I remember the smell of herbs, every day as my father made his tea that should help him to breath. And it did help him . . . He did found it easier to breath. More so, the herbs should show up to help more than anybody expected.
As he went to his doctor every week for X-ray, his doctor got more and more confused. Finally he told my father that it seemed that the Cancer-cyst was shrinking. After one year, the Cancer was all gone. My father stopped to get so sick and stopped puking blood. He had actually not been in the hospital for long time. The doctor could not explain what happened, but it seemed that the Tuberculosis had evaporated. He didn’t have the shadows on his lungs anymore.
But he didn’t get back his work-permit.
When the medicine for Tuberculosis came, he was enforced to take them, although he by then had been free from the illness for two years.
Still, he didn’t get back his work-permit.
He looked by now, healthy and strong and since he also from the nature had somewhat colored complexion, people around started to bully him for not working.
He recovered from his ill health, but he actually never recovered from the bullying of the people.
He was ashamed, feeling small and useless. It was my mom who rose him from “the mud” one day when she said: “It doesn’t matter who is at home and who is working in a family. What matter is that one brings the money for food on the table and one is at home and takes care of the children. Since I never have been good in making food, hate to clean and do house-work and so one, I am so happy that I am allowed to work. What people say, doesn’t matter . . . It is what we know, that matters.”
This rose my father to respect again and he did the house-work, cleaned our clothes, made the food and did his best in everything.

What my mother said, become a rule of living in my life.
All the people that bullied my father, didn’t know about his health. They only took account for his appearance and when he looked healthy, they took it for granted that he was healthy.

Remember that, next time you want to criticize someone for something.
It doesn’t matter how much you believe you know about the person and about the case. You still don’t know even a fraction of the whole picture.