Pavlin died.
He and Krassimira were our “host parents” during our Peace Corps training. We lived in their home, ate their food, learned their language, appreciated their practicality and humor, and became a part of their family more deeply than we ever could have hoped.
He was ten years younger than we were, and now he will never grow older. In my fondest memories he will always be 46, and it always gave us both a smile when I called him Dad. Another Bulgarian friend, meeting Pavlin over a weekend Peace Corps training session, remarked that he liked him. “He is a gentle man.”
In the hills above Koprivshtitza. Pavlin sang us a few bars of the Bulgarian National Anthem.
I had not been able to get in touch with Pavlin by phone or message for a long time. He had drifted away from Facebook and other kinds of artificial social contact. Thinking of him one recent day, I texted his daughter, asking how he was. She told me he was no longer among the living. He had died a few days before. We shared text-message tears.
Stormy and I had learned that he was ill, dealing with chemo and the other grimly hopeful realities of cancer, when we last visited Bulgaria. When I wrote about that trip I didn’t intrude on his privacy by telling about his illness, saying only that amidst lots of good changes since we left, the lives of some we knew there had been “burdened beyond bearing.” He had moved back to the village where he grew up, to be cared for by his aging mother, not far from where we knew him and Krassimira.
Back when we were there with them, in addition to our daily schedule of classes and training activities, our family activities were regulated by his work schedule:
Pavlin worked for the Bulgarian National Electric Company, twelve-hour shifts. His schedule was a four-day cycle: 7:00 AM start for a day shift, then the next day starting at 7:00 PM to work the night, two days off, and repeat. He commuted by motorcycle to a distribution substation a few kilometers outside of town. He was usually there by himself, unless a repair or emergency required another technician or engineer to come in. Rosen drove us there once for a visit when Pavlin was on a night shift. The isolation of the outpost was striking. It was a concrete building the size of a small barn, at the end of a long dark path. A single small bulb by the door welcomed us. The control room, in contrast, was brightly lit. Big pale-green consoles held buttons and levers and meters. A status board indicated the condition of different parts of the system with red and green lights. A green and white sign posted over the desk gave the reminder, “Work here.”
He gave us that sign, as a parting gift when we finished our training and were leaving the comfort and security of his home to go out and begin our work. The little souvenir carried a wistful message that brought a tear to his eye with our leaving, that he wished we could stay there with them rather than going off to Pazardjik. “Stay. Work here.”
Our favorite Bulgari (Bulgarians) in front of the BVLGARI shop on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. They visited us in California in 2005.
I think of Pavlin sometimes when an adversity needs to be best met with a smile and a shrug. And more, then, to start on the solution without complaining. That was like my father in America, which might have been why his down-to-earth ways resonated with me.
I think of him when I taste rakiya, — Bulgaria’s national moonshine — the strong drink that he taught us to enjoy and appreciate. I remember the warm starry night in the village where we joined him with his friend distilling it in a large copper and brass still, his friend stoking the wood fire as the constant rushing sound of cooling system water filled the room cascading into an open reservoir in the loop, and valves hissed, and we all visited and laughed together over sausages and cheeses until time seemed to collapse and it was very late, all done, time to go. Pavlin’s friend gave me a bottle of his own supply of matured rakiya that night, to give to my father in America on our upcoming visit.
I think of him at Easter. He taught us the Easter greeting that everyone uses for those three holy days, in homes and on the street, in shops and banks and drab gray government offices: Hristos voskrese, Christ is risen! And the response, Voistina voskrese, Truly risen! For the solemn seasons anticipating both Easter and Christmas, he did the Post, the fast, avoiding “all animal products except honey” as a sacred discipline. I think those sacrifices, and his kind and generous nature, must have earned him some blessed relief in entering his heavenly home.
I hope so.