17/09/2026
Be, My Gentle Giant,
I keep waiting to wake up from this. I keep listening for your footsteps, for that laugh of yours at something only you found funny, for the smile that used to greet me like nothing bad could ever happen as long as you were near. But the house has been quiet for several months now. And I don't know how a home this full of your laughter can suddenly feel so empty.
These past months without you here beside us were already hard enough, Pat. Every day I wished I could be there, holding your hand, but for reasons only God knows, we have been kept from each other in the last few months leading to your departure. But oh, how I wished we could have been given the chance to be beside you on your remaining days. How I wished Patricia could have climbed into your arms just one more time, that you could have heard her laugh again, that I could have held your hand and told you, one more time, how much I loved you. There is an ache in me now that has nothing to do with goodbye and everything to do with all the days we didn't get — the ones stolen from us before I ever got to say them.
How do I say goodbye to you? You were never a man of many words — you didn't need them. You said everything with that smile, the one that made strangers feel like family, that made me feel, every single day, like the safest, luckiest woman in the world. My gentle giant. Big enough to make any room feel safe. Soft enough to make our home feel like heaven.
Patricia is only two. She doesn't understand yet why Papa isn't lifting her up anymore. She still looks toward the door sometimes, waiting. And it breaks me, knowing she is too young to hold onto her own memories of you — that I will have to be the one to keep you alive for her. I will tell her everything. How her Papa was gentle and kind and full of warmth. How he loved without needing anyone to notice. How he would have given her the whole world without a second thought.
You never once acted like you were better than anybody. You helped without being asked and walked away without taking credit. You made people laugh just to see them smile. That humility wasn't something you practiced, it was simply who you were, all the way down, in everything from the classroom to the court to the newsroom you loved for eleven years.
I don't have your gift for saying much with so little, so forgive me if these words aren't enough. They will never be enough. But I need you to know: thank you. Thank you for every year you gave me, even the ones cut short. Thank you for our little girl. Thank you for being the calm in every storm, the joy in every ordinary day, the arms I never once doubted would hold us — even from a distance, even when I couldn't reach you.
I don't know how to raise Patricia without you beside me. I don't know how to fall asleep without reaching for you. But I will try, because that's what you'd want — you'd want us gentle, you'd want us kind, you'd want us smiling the way you taught us to, even now.
You are not gone, Pat. You are in every gentle thing Patricia will grow up to be. You are in every kindness I choose to carry forward in your name. You are in the quiet, in the laughter I'll teach her to remember, in the missing that will never fully go away — and in the distance that separated us these last months, but never once separated my heart from yours.
Rest now, my gentle giant. I will hold our daughter the way you held us both — with everything I have.
Until we meet again.
Forever and always yours,
Bela
