In the middle of the night on Friday 27 August 2004, explosions shook the near-abandoned building at Nawrot 7, Lodz, Poland. The ground floor flat burst into flames, turning the main staircase into a blazing inferno, cutting off electricity and sending smoke billowing up to the fourth floor. On the second floor, my mother who went to stay there to finalise the furniture removal for my grandma who had already been moved to a care home, woke up in shock and quickly realised her escape route had been cut off. In desperation, she tied a bedsheet to the balcony and tried to climb down. She slipped and fell twenty five feet to the concrete courtyard. Smashing her head she died instantly. She was sixty three. According to the police, the fire was started deliberately by a known arsonist, who moved in illegally into the ground floor flat with his family and reconnected the gas supply in an amateur fashion. He suffered seventy percent burns and at last count was stable in a special burns unit in the south of Poland. I buried my mum a week after her tragic and unnecessary death and dealt with the removal having saved what I could from the flat in which I was raised. According to the authorities, the entire block may now be demolished. As I passed it for the last time, one of the stray courtyard cats was staring at me from the entrance. My mother loved cats and I could almost swear that look was hers.

If you'd like to see happier times, go to http://www.pbase.com/warno/grandma
This is a link to the Polish news story http://miasta.gazeta.pl/lodz/1,35136,2254687.html
A tribute to my mother http://www.pbase.com/warno/mama