The Adriatic Sea

Short version: Tim and I toddled off to a beach on the Adriatic today. The sun was high in the sky, the sea was blue and we had a wonderful time.

Long version: shortly after WWII, my father fled his homeland of Yugoslavia. He had fought in the war in the King's forces against the Nazis. After the war Tito's Communists took over the country, the King fled to London (where his descendants still live) and people like my father were not welcome, even though they had all fought the Nazis together.

My father and some of his friends sailed across the Adriatic to Italy, to the shore I was on today (or somewhere relatively nearby). They nearly didn't make it - a poorly made boat, too many people in it - you've seen similar images these past few years of people fleeing Syria. My father and his friends were refugees before the Geneva Convention on Refugees was signed. He spent the next few years making his way across Europe, eventually landing in England in about 1948, met my mum in the early 1950s and they married and emigrated to Canada a couple of years later.

I don't know much more detail of my father's life in those post-war years. He died when I was a teenager, 35 years ago, and everyone who knew him that I also knew are all long gone, too.

I floated in the Adriatic today, profoundly grateful that my father made it across that sea, that he somehow managed to survive the war and it's aftermath, that he managed to marry and make it over to far away Canada.

I miss him.