Fool's Circle

This is the story of my life that began to turn a full circle at the age of sixty-nine. It is the story of one who made many mistakes, but never as foolish as the last one. It is the story that begins from the first memories of my childhood, the outbreak of World War II. It relives the misery of the Soviet deportation in 1940, the horrors of the Soviet corrective labour camp in the Archangel region, the journey through the Soviet Union to Uzbekistan and Iran. After that, the story deals with my life in the Polish Children's Home in Oudtshoorn. Then I go on to my life in Pietermaritzburg, the seminary days and nearly six years of studies in Rome. Subsequently, I scrutinize my priestly life, my decision to leave the priesthood, my marriage of twenty-five years and the trauma of my wife's death that almost drowned me in the bog of loneliness. I lament the subsequent attempt to escape from loneliness and the one-day second marriage, which ended in a divorce seven months later. I end my story with a reflection on the closure of my life as "a circle from childhood to childhood" at the age of eighty.