Introspecting about the relationship between me and my recently deceased grandfather

[Milos Uzelac]

My grandfather, Milan Uzelac, with whom I have been often living together, on an on/off basis, shifting my stay in my late mother's and father's apartment and grandfather's apartment, with my grandmother in a 21-story building apartment complex, that he received as compensation and reward for his military services and as a higher-ranking officer in the Yugoslav's People's (or National) Army, for almost two years now since I turned 20, has passed away suddenly, since we are all shocked when informed about it, last Sunday on 27th September 2020. at 11:30 pm CEST. He was 85 years old and would turn 86, on January 6th (or 7th - this uncertainty is due to an error about the date of his birth on his birth certificate that was issued when he was born in 1935.).

We managed to get ourselves together, my father, aunt, grandmother, and I, and to pay for the organizing of a military funereal for him, since he reached the rank of lieutenant-colonel in the YNA (or YPA) Airforce Division at the time of his retirement in 1991. and because he, immediately after his retirement in YNA, also set out, to go and serve as local commander of a military volunteer division in the region of Lika, where my grandfather was born in 1935. and where most of his family and relatives were from, and near the city of Udbina in today's Croatia, on the side of the short-lived political entity, Republic of Srpska Krajina, at the start of the outbreak of the war in Croatia from 1991. till the temporary ceasefire in 1992., that was held on October 1st, 2020. at 13:30 pm CEST at Novo-bežanijska graveyard in the municipality of Bežanijska Kosa, in Belgrade.

I would also share, as part of my personal journal on introspecting my past relationships with my grandfather and my current relationships with the images and memories that I have of him in my mind, and what he meant to me, in the past while he was alive in different periods of my life, and means to me now when he is gone.

I want to post images, from the funereal of my grandfather held on Thursday here, not as an attempt to propagandize or mythologize the personality, life, and life-achievements and decisions of my grandfather, in order to gain consensus and approval from people that might want to view this thread that my grandfather was a person that stood out from common people with the way he was as a personality and the way he decided to strive to live his life and what he managed to achieve, learn and do in his life-span in the age he lived in most, but in order, for me to better understand, from the vantage point of this personal development forum, of how I acted, behaved and was in this event and how I see my grandfather now and the meaning of what my relationship was and could have been and what was and is the relationship of the rest my close family towards my grandfather in the past and what it is now, and how does that relate and what does that mean for the quality and nature of relationship that the rest of my close family now has with me.

I hope the pictures and contents of this post are not against forum guidelines and don't get interpreted the wrong way, my intent for posting them, as of now,  is for my own relationship introspective reasons and, partly I admit as an experimental springboard for finding an adequate format and place for honoring my grandfather's life and passing by writing excerpts about his biography on some online format seeable and readable in English, in order for it to be available and understandable to as many people as possible, and as, I have been feeling and had feelings and thoughts about it pop up continually as of late, as necessary part or threshold barrier, for my own personal development and for better understanding myself and why I am here.

 

 

Edited October 4, 2020 by Milos Uzelac