Irena ended her voyage on June 13 2012

Irena reached the end of her voyage on June 13 2012 after 15 days in coma at Fréjus hospital, following an unfortunate car accident that happened on May 30th.

On that sunny day of the end of may, she had set off with her friend Geneviève for a good day. She had called Charlotte her grand-daughter in the morning saying how she was looking forward to this day with her friend. The accident happened at 4.30PM. As per her will, Irena was cremated and her ashes were dispersed above the Bergerie, the property that she loved so much.

On the last day of August 2012, we were invited with many of her friends by Andrew her son, Lucinda his spouse and their three children, to pay a tribute to Irena. Irena's story is a fascinating one, which I had the privilege to share by formatting it to be published on the internet [link to this story]. This formed the basis of a book that Irena published in english "from snow to sunshine". The book was later translated into Polish. Irena had preserved her Polishness with her accent and her continuous references to her mother country; but she was always grateful to England for having made her what she and her husband became after that terrible war which annilihated millions of individual lives.

Peter Massey, an anglican vicar who has established in Lorgues, gave us room for thought. Although he had never met Irena, he had gauged her by reading her book and he said some very moving things comparing her voyage to that of Moses. Peter Massey is a member of the committee of the "British Association of the Var".

My thoughts on this occasion of gathering and sharing, is that every one of us has a story; a story that corresponds to the unfolding of events and circumstances of our individual selves, from birth to death; and that is a very long time indeed. We share these circumstances with a score of other indivduals, our grand-parents, parents, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, the one we choose marry, our children, our school and work friends , and all those that we meet and exchange with during our lifetime... the number is countless and recording the circumstances is impossible. Each of these individuals have their own story and circumstances. I realise this after so many years that I wonder why I missed the point. I therefore request forgiveness to those to whom I did ill in the course of exchange. We cannot know the circumstances of the lives of each of us, unless they narrate these circumstances; but even then, it is only a small part. I have done this briefly for myself (click on my picture). Peter Rost's circumstances of life are so extraordinary that he has written a book "from Weimer to Westminister". His father and mother were a mixed jew-lutheran married couple living in Berlin where Peter was born in 1930. When the nazi regime launched anti-jewish action, the nazis annulled the marriage of his parents because one was a jew. His parents escaped to England just before the border was shut to emigrating jews; those that couldn't escape were caught in the trap that led to the holocaust. Peter was educated in England and he became a prominent member of parliament [see his story in the links]. Friedrich von Hayek's book "the road to serfdom" relates to this dark period of European history. Irena's and Peter's stories are related in this respect as well as mine.

Individualism and liberty is the fundamental character of men and women. Genetically, we are the result of the recombination of genes of our two parents. Each parent is the result of the recombination of genes of their parents. And so on going upwards back in time, an exponent of one in two at each generation. We transmit to our children some of our genes by recombining with some of the genes of our partner. Thus we are the vehicles of the genes - end and start - of all humanity. This is evolution as described by Charles Darwin in the "origin of species"; and by Richard Dawkins in the "Selfish gene", the "Blind Watchmaker" and "Climbing Mount improbable". See the Richard Dawkins foundation.

The characters of our humanity, particulary the brain that evolution has given us, has given us language by which we communicate and exchange the circumstances of our individual lives. This enables the propagation of ideas and behaviours. Memes. "A meme is an idea, behavior or style that spreads from person to person within a culture. A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through speech, writing, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate and respond to selective pressures." and to the need for adapting to the realities of each generation's timeframe. There is also a lot to gain by reading the work of pyschiatrist Alice Miller [link to her here].

As individuals, we are fundamentally "selfish" ie. we are occupied to survive, to promote ourselves, to be better than others, to succeed in every field of action and thinking... Bt we cannot live without interacting with our fellow beings - think of sex - and because we want to make a success of this, our "selfishness" leads to a common good, a result that we cannot anticipate and is beyond of our conscious aims. This is genetically imprinted in us and forms a "natural social order". Any attempt by any "organized social order" - be it the state, an institution, an ideology - to interfere with the "natural social order" leads to the serfdom that Hayek denounces. There are degrees of serfdom that vary from the very worst - nazism in Germany, stalinism in Russia, Pol Pot in Cambodia - to the softest - collectivism, socialism.

As a conclusion I like this quotation by Sir Winston Churchill. I think it was Irena's view of life and that it applies to all of us:
"Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb. Sir Winston Churchill. British politician (1874 - 1965)."

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Mis en ligne le 01/09/2012