Portrait and her place in my life

Draga, my mother's younger sister, was more than an aunt to me. She was like a third mother, after my own mother and Mama Linica, my grandmother. I opened my eyes to the world seeing her in our house, day after day, protecting me whenever I needed it. When I could not yet speak properly, I called her Dădica, and I used that name for her until her death.

Draga was a warm and protective presence who accompanied me through the most important stages of my life. Our relationship was special and deep. My story about Draga is deeply emotional, full of ups and downs, marked by moments of love, difficulties and, finally, tragedy.

Medicine, beauty and meeting Igor

After finishing high school, Draga enrolled in Medicine, claiming she liked the profession of doctor. Being very beautiful, as a student at the Faculty of Medicine she was courted by many colleagues. She chose one of them, Igor Bodeanschi, an eminent student of Bessarabian-Gagauz origin from Comrat, two years older than her. Igor was a chubby guy, always cheerful, gentle, loving with Draga, helpful with everyone—the salt of the earth! Due to the dramatic events that had Bessarabia as a theater of war, Igor's family had moved to Transylvania, at Odorhei, and he decided to stay as close as possible to them during this complex period. So that Draga would get used to his family, he sent her a few months before the wedding to Odorhei to stay with her future in-laws, while he took his license exams in Bucharest. In Odorhei, Draga learned to cook guided by the iron hand of her future mother-in-law.

The marriage to Igor: haste and the first cracks

Unlike my mother, Draga didn't have the patience to finish her studies before getting married. In January 1943, when she was in her fourth year of faculty and had relatively few exams left, she married Igor, already a military doctor. This haste suited Igor; moreover, he claimed that Draga could interrupt her faculty, as his income as a doctor was sufficient to support her. The wedding party was organized by Marioara and Luca, my future godparents, in their villa on Cazărmii Street.

What followed this happy beginning? An ordeal followed for Draga due to her rebellious nature; she didn't know how to organize her life and reacted to life's events through many times ill-advised impulses.

Odorhei, addiction and the clinic in Cluj

After the wedding, the two moved to Odorhei, to Igor's parents' house. Unfortunately, their marriage was short, only six years. Despite Igor's immeasurable love for Draga, their relationship deteriorated quickly. The lack of concerns and activity in Odorhei made Draga fall prey to an addiction to morphine, a problem Igor didn't know about for a long time and then didn't know how to manage.

Radu: the years in our house

Finally, Draga was hospitalized in a detoxification clinic in Cluj. There she met Captain Radu Dașchievici, a young and charismatic officer who came to the hospital to visit his hospitalized sister, Draga's roommate. From visit to visit, a relationship was born between Draga and Radu, which materialized in a marriage proposal. Draga asked for a divorce from Igor and in 1950 she married Radu.

Although I had known Draga since I was little, our special relationship began to develop after, following her second marriage, the two spouses moved in with us in the house, a room becoming free after my great-grandmother's death. Radu was a tall, blond man with blue eyes and, together with Draga, beautiful herself, they formed an apparently perfect couple. But the reality was different, and their story that started brilliantly was to end in a disaster.

In the years spent together in the house, Radu and Draga treated me like their own child. Together we went on vacations to the seaside or to Călimănești, to the theater or to the cinema. They showed me what generosity and care for a child mean. They were more available than my parents, who were always busy, and that's why I demanded more from them even than from my parents.

The theater tickets episode

One episode remained imprinted in my mind. I was nine years old when I found out that Draga and Radu had theater tickets. I became excited at the thought that I would go too. It would not have been the first time. But they told me that this time they did not have a ticket for me. My frustration was so great that, in secret, I found their tickets, tore them up and threw them into the stove's ash drawer, saying to myself: "There, that's what you get for not taking me to the theater too!" When they could no longer find the tickets where they had left them, and my cheerful face gave me away, the scandal that followed echoed through the whole house. My father, furious, gave me a sound beating, while Draga and Radu, especially Radu, always calm and gentle, tried to save me. Their intervention did not manage to get me out of my father's hands.

The rupture: divorce and relapse

After seven years of marriage, at a funeral, Radu met a lady in the cemetery, the wife of a distant relative, who turned his head, and his apparently indestructible love relationship with Draga fell apart. The divorce and Radu's immediate marriage to the respective lady left Draga in a terrible suffering, which pushed her to relapse into morphine addiction. The suicide attempt and her emotional fragility made the family mobilize to help her regain her balance.

With the support of relatives, Draga tried to rebuild her life. She returned to medical school, but the twenty years that had passed since her first student days made it impossible to readapt. Instead, she began working as a nurse and then as a radiology technician in a clinic frequented by patients with lung diseases, somewhere far from home, on Giurgiului Road. Although constant exposure to radiation could endanger her health, Draga did not seem to worry. She had found a purpose and a rhythm of life that gave her a fragile balance.

Work, remi and the cozonacs

Draga had another vice that brought her great joy: gambling. Remi evenings at the house of cousins Anca and Tibi were a true family ritual, gathering all the enthusiasts, including my father. Until midnight, laughter and the excitement of the games filled the house. When she was married to Radu, Draga dragged him along too, although he had no passion for gambling; and when he did play, he always lost, irritating his wife, who scolded him in front of the others. Perhaps this too was one reason Radu drifted away from Draga. In my parents' relationship as well, those nocturnal games were a source of argument. My mother did not like to play, while my father loved games: from backgammon to remi and poker, they all fascinated him. When my father came home after midnight, my mother did not spare him reproaches, nor did she spare Anca and Tibi, who appeared as the "ringleaders" of these family gatherings: "Come on, dear, don't you think this man has a job and has to get up at six in the morning?" my mother would burst out from time to time.

One of the most beautiful family traditions in which Draga played an essential role was the preparation of cozonacs at Easter and Christmas. My grandmother used Draga to "beat" the cozonacs, a job that required considerable strength and much patience. After midnight, when the dough had to be kneaded and beaten for a whole hour to have the necessary time to rise in the wooden trough, Draga became the family's savior. Sometimes she was late from the remi games, which made my grandmother panic: "You'll see that she'll leave me and I won't be able to make cozonacs anymore." But Draga never missed. She always appeared on time, rolled up her sleeves and set to work, calming the whole house.

The years after my father's death

My dearest memories with Draga remain from the period when, after my father's death, there were only her, my mother and grandmother in the house. Draga had a short schedule at work, six hours. She returned home earlier than me and set to cooking, more precisely to finalizing what my grandmother had started cooking that morning. When we, my mother and I, arrived home from work, Draga was waiting for us with the table ready, cooked with the skill she had learned from her mother-in-law in Odorhei. For years, this routine brought us closer and showed me how much she cared for me.

Draga's last years were marked by loneliness. In her studio apartment in Drumul Taberei, assigned to her after the demolition of our house, her life narrowed more and more. She no longer felt like cooking and ate mostly cold cuts and prepared foods. She missed me, the person who had given her a reason to prove her presence in my life. She visited us often, especially after the birth of my son, for whom she developed a real passion. She walked him through the park when he was little, or met him there when he was being watched by Natalia, the woman who took care of him while we were at work. After we left for Italy, she lost even that small joy.

The decline: loneliness, the accident, the last years

After Anca and Tibi left the country, the "Casino" on Puișor Street came to an end, and Draga found a circle of women friends for poker games. This passion, however, would bring her trouble. One winter evening, on her way to such a game, she slipped on the ice and fractured her femur. The femoral-neck prosthesis placed in her hip became infected and had to be removed after a while; another could no longer be implanted. The fracture marked the beginning of a decade of suffering and physical and emotional decline. Repeated infections and medical complications made her withdraw into her studio apartment in Drumul Taberei, and life became an ordeal for her.

In those hard years, I was her main support. Although I lived in Rome, I saw Draga whenever I returned to Romania for courses at the University of Constanța. From the beginning, I made sure she had help with daily chores and hired a woman to visit her every two days, bringing the agreed-upon groceries as well. But loneliness and physical suffering slowly took their toll. She had become harsh and recalcitrant, refused to be seen by doctors and said "no" to anything proposed to her. Whenever she met her sister Zizi, my mother, they fought over nothing, with tears and reproaches of every kind, until I forbade my mother to visit her anymore. The relationship between the two sisters had never been warm, but things had gone too far, and for my mother's peace and mine I had to make that decision. At my request, Igor, her first husband, offered to visit and help her, but Draga, proud as she was, categorically refused to be seen by Igor in her state of decline.

The end and the void left behind

In November 2000, I came to the country for her birthday and we celebrated as best we could. She didn't want to see anyone else but me and the woman who now came daily in the morning to see her. So it was just the two of us, a cake with lit candles, a glass of wine and her smile that made me feel that she still had small joys to cling to. Six weeks later, Draga died alone in the house due to a generalized infection she didn't want to treat. As a doctor, she knew what that meant, but for her, life no longer had any meaning. She was 80 years old, and her loss left a void in my life and a sense of guilt that I couldn't save her.