"Artur and me" - memory of Artur Kozlowski

5 September 2012 – seemingly day as usual. Waking up at 7:30 a.m. Quick coffee, standard fight with Wojtek and his inborn tendency to delay everything standard, which in this case means 15 minutes spent on getting dressed and 30 minutes of breakfast. What the hell, let him have it. He’ll still have time to chase the clock. After all, this is why we get up 30 minutes earlier, so as not to start the day with a race. Wojtek eats his standard cereal with milk and I pop outside for a cigarette.

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It is beautiful. Clear skies, the sun is gently blazing, as if to trick us all by saying – autumn is just around the corner, enjoy my rays. And so I do. I know, I know, it would be much more correct if instead of a cigarette I only held a cup of hot coffee in my hand. Well, everyone has some kind of weakness. He had one too.

In the meantime, Wojtek finishes his cereal and without being reminded, runs to the downstairs bathroom to brush his teeth. Jesus, how big he is already. And yet I remember how not long ago he was riding with me… but slowly.

My new little morning whirl. Second breakfast, commonly called lunch by Poles – into a box. A banana, a bottle of water and the obligatory napkin. Just to put some cream on my face and get in the car.

You must know that before 9am the traffic jams in Oranmore are atrocious. Hundreds of parents try at all costs to get as close to the school as possible, performing their ritualistic transport dance. I know it’s only the third day, but I’ve allowed myself to form a habit from the start.

I park my car much earlier, in a place where there is no car overcrowding yet, and the rest of the distance to school we cover with Wojtek on foot. Thanks to this, we do not waste fuel senselessly, we save ourselves the nerves connected with finding a free place to park and instead of unnecessarily tiring our calf muscles by alternately pressing the clutch pedal, accelerator and brake pedal 80 times, we let them work calmly and evenly while walking.

I relax, Wojtek oxygenates before a few hours of school and by the way we have a few extra minutes to talk and be with each other. And just like that, calmly marching together, talking, as it happens in such situations, about everything and nothing, Wojtek throws a question, starting a short conversation between us, which will sound in my ears for a long time.

– Daddy. And are you going to the cemetery today?

– What for?

– To Arthur.

– Which Arthur? (I said, pulling him by the tongue, not believing that the youngster remembers and would be willing to put together so much from overheard fragments of conversations).

– Well uncle, who used to be with us and then he died when he was diving in the cave. And what we were there as he slept in a tent and there was this cow what you walked into a poo.

My knees have collapsed under me. I had been thinking about today for some time but due to the so called morning whirl of events, after waking up I completely forgot about it. The day before I had talked with Karolina about what to do with Wojtek after school, because I wanted to go to Kiltartan alone at all costs.

The more so as we had agreed earlier with Seal and Jim and the plan was to visit a bar for a so-called one-paint. And in fact, whenever I was going to pick up Artur in Gort, I always took Wojtek with me. And in fact, the last time we both picked Artur up from Gort, there was one, only one cow on the meadow where Artur was camping, and in fact while transporting the equipment, I managed to walk into one of the legacies left by it.

14 hours later Wojtek was already asleep. I was sitting with my wife with a glass of Irish whiskey. Karolina was trying to engage me in a conversation on some such topics. Work, friends, something there, something there. And I was overwhelmed by melancholy and my thoughts revolved around one topic. Of course, as you suspect, I didn’t go to bed completely sober that evening.

While lying in bed, I thought about what and how Wojtek had asked me in the morning. I started to recall those few moments that I had the opportunity to spend with Arthur and in the meantime I thought to myself that it would be a pity to lose those memories. I thought – maybe I should write something? Because usually in the state of so called pre-sleep lightness of mind I have various interesting ideas, after which there is no trace on the next day, I typed a quick note into the phone – “Artur and I”. Surprisingly this time I remembered it the next day.

CDN…