After celebration of her 100th birthday in December last year, grandma Stana Srdic is still reading, crocheting and knitting, and she is looking forward to better weather conditions in order to go out and walk around her garden.
Stana lives with her daughter Draginja Macanovic (74) and her family in the settlement Laus in Banja Luka, and she is satisfied because “her brain is still functioning properly” and her health is very good.
“I read a bit, usually take a look at the newspapers. I have a lot of my books. I’ve read this Gospel five times already, and it has 500 pages. What can I do, I just sit and read,” she said.
She survived two wars, gave birth to ten children, worked very hard and although her life was “not always great”, she never regrets it.
“I worked a lot, and whatever I was doing, I was singing while doing it. I was never sad. I raised my children, I gave birth to them without a doctor or nurse, alone,” she said.
Stana has 19 grandchildren and 20 grand-grandchildren, but most of her family live abroad, so they visit her at least once a year. Her granddaughter Ranka Galic, Draginja’s daughter, said that the entire family is very proud of her grandmother.
She thinks that Stana’s life was very interesting, but so hard that today’s generation cannot even imagine it. How hardworking Stana is can be seen in the fact that she would like to go to the village again, to work. Ranka also believes that she has survived for more than a century because of that.
“I believe that work and a positive attitude towards life are the only thing that can make a man survive. We should not be negative, I am also positive, I’m not afraid of work… It is easy to just sit and complain, but we all have problems and we need to deal with our problems in a positive way,” stated Ranka Galic.
(Source: Radiosarajevo/Photo: Anadolija)
