Latvian Writer and Poet Eriks Raisters

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On Wednesday, November 15, 1967, I was ten years old. It was the day my father went to Heaven. I had come home from school at lunchtime and wanted to spend the afternoon at home with my father, who was in bed feeling poorly. My mother insisted I go back to school. She had also come home at lunchtime, working at the Latvian newspaper offices of “Laiks,” or “Time,” just a few blocks away. I never saw my father alive again, and the nitroglycerin tablet he had tried to take was found beside the bed on the rug. I felt I could have helped him, and my mother became Public Enemy Number One to me. I was told about the death of my father by the spirit of my maternal grandmother, who appeared beside me and patted me on the head. My father was a great Latvian patriot, and so, as fate would have it, his funeral was on November 18th, Latvia’s National Independence Day. So you see, with all these memories, including Martins' Names Day, November is not an easy month for me. BTW, I thought you would find it interesting that my mother’s father, whom I never met, was also named Martins. A photo of me and my dad