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say to change his mind.
Besides being strong and courageous, he was one of the most
respected men I have ever known. There wasn’t a person he met that didn’t end up respecting him in the end.
However, I must tell you, Baba Met didn’t get respect because of his money or his power or any of those other reasons that we often believe bring us respect. He received respect simply because he knew how to give respect to people first. He often told us that in order to receive respect you have to be willing to give it first to other people. Respect comes and goes both ways.
My grandfather gave respect everyone from the oldest man to the youngest baby. He often told us that even the homeless people living on the streets deserved respect from you. I remember when we use to go to Kosova in the summertime. We often ran into Baba all over the place and he was always giving money to someone he ran into because they needed it far more than he did. He never looked down on anyone or turned his back on people because they were less fortunate. In fact he often tried to help them out as best he knew how. To him, material things weren’t what gave you respect or made you a great person. How you treated people in life and how you did things were.
To me it seems that grandfather represented what every Albanian strives to achieve in his life—to be a well respected person whom everyone looks up to, especially one’s grandchildren. Even though we often didn’t agree with or even understand his beliefs we still gave him the respect and admiration he deserved, just like he gave us the respect and admiration he thought we deserved.
As the oldest of his 16 grandchildren, I have to tell you a little about the man who spent time with us. Everyone else knew him as this strong and proper man with whom one could carry on an intelligent conversation. However, with us he was the fun-loving grandfather who tried his best to find time for us. Whether it was to play with us or to yell at us or just to sit us on his lap and pinch our cheeks, Baba Met didn’t let a day go by without showing us how much loved us.
As kids we have a connection with our grandfather that doesn’t really become a strong bond until we are old enough to be taken seriously. As kids our relationship with our grandfather is a playful one,