A handwritten letter and Christmas wishes arrived in my mailbox today from David Dastych’s widow, Sophie in faraway Poland.
David died at age 69 on September 12. The letter arriving only this afternoon was a long time in coming, but Sophie needed help with English to write it.
David’s many friends had understood that he died from cancer. But his death was the result of some kind of infection that developed during a bronchoscopy.
In Sophie’s own words: “He died because of doctor mistake. Doctors thought that it was a cancer but was water in his lung”.
“I suffer because of this and I still do not understand how it could have happened.”
Sophie and David were a very close and loving couple. They lived in an apartment in Warsaw with their dog, Atos and cat, Mikey.
“Life surprises us,” Sophie wrote in her poignant letter. “Nobody expected that David would pass away so quickly. He loved life and people so much. He had a lot of plans for the future, but God took him to his place.”
There was more sad news in Sophie’s letter: “Mikey our cat missed David so much that he decided not to eat. He was in a very bad condition and the vet said that he was just not interested to stay longer in this world. So he was put to sleep on November 8, and now it is only two of us, Atos and myself.”
David, a courageous Communist fighter for his entire life, survived many things, including the death of his only son under mysterious circumstances and imprisonment by the KGB in his native Poland.
Told that he would never walk again after a mountain hiking accident, he walked after three years of painstaking therapy. You can read more about David and his remarkable life here.
In short, David was a hero and that makes his much beloved Sophie the widow of a hero.
Lonely and lost without him, Sophie says she’s “slowly, very slowly trying to go back to myself”.
It is my New Year’s wish that people will write to Sophie in her loneliness: sophiedavid@op.pl
Judi McLeod——Bio and Archives
-- Judi McLeod, Founder, Owner and Editor of Canada Free Press, is an award-winning journalist with more than 30 years’ experience in the print and online media. A former Toronto Sun columnist, she also worked for the Kingston Whig Standard. Her work has appeared throughout the ‘Net, including on Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.
A handwritten letter and Christmas wishes arrived in my mailbox today from David Dastych’s widow, Sophie in faraway Poland.
David died at age 69 on September 12. The letter arriving only this afternoon was a long time in coming, but Sophie needed help with English to write it.
David’s many friends had understood that he died from cancer. But his death was the result of some kind of infection that developed during a bronchoscopy.
