Agnieszka died on August 4, 2012. Suddenly, unexpectedly. She was only 62 years old.

    I have known Her almost all my life, although I do not recall our first encounter. We were both at the age, when one does not record events for a long time, if at all. When we met again, I was five and half years old. I don't recall this meeting either, but I do remember many of the later scenes from our happy childhood together. I remember, for example, the theater on the porch of their house. One day we presented "The Trojan War" based on Agnieszka's brief, handed to us orally, scenario and with Her "starring" as the beautiful Helen. (Jaś played the role of Parys, and I was the jealous Menelaus, while understanding almost nothing of the story.) Agnieszka was a little older than me, but much more mature, and I watched her closely, the way a younger sister watches her elder sister. I suppose I imitated her to some extend. Certainly, I read the same books. 

There was only one tiny bookstore in our small town. I see vaguely three stairs leading to the dim interior, a serious looking woman behind the high counter, and I remember distinctly the smell this place - the mysterious and exciting smell of new books. And the purpose of our visit. In the early sixties they started to reprint "Mary Poppins" in Poland.  The book was translated between the wars by Irena Tuwim who changed the protagonist’s name to "Agnieszka". That winter day -  was it our Agnieszka's birthday? - we visited the bookstore to find out if "Agnieszka comes back" had already been delivered to our town. Why do I remember this scene so vividly? Did I record it in my memory because of the two Agnieszkas? Or maybe I was deeply impressed that Agnieszka knew about a book about which I had no idea? In the lives of children that we were at that time everything is just beginning and nothing definitely ends. Also, in the stories we read. And although Mary Poppins abruptly left, disappeared from Number Seventeen Cherry Tree Lane, which filled the Banks children and us, the young readers, with deep sadness, we all shared the same hope that the magical nanny will return in the next book, because in the farewell letter she wrote "Au revoir ", not "Adieu".

   More than a half century have passed since our memorable visit to the tiny bookstore. My peers and I came to the stage of life in which hardly anything starts anymore, but many things end. People we have loved suddenly leave, disappear from our life. And they do not come back like the heroine of P. L. Travers books. 

This story will not have a sequel. Adieu, Agnieszka.