An 80-year friendship. High school classmates reunited at Cardinal Beran Senior Home

Two high school classmates met this year at Cardinal Beran Senior Home. Both Zorka and Lída are 94 years old, and their friendship has lasted eighty years.

They met in 1945 at the Catholic girls‘ gymnasium run by the School Sisters at Peace Square in Prague. The war had just ended, and they were fourteen years old. There were five inseparable friends in their class: Maruška, Hanka, Dáša, Lída, and Zorka.

„We didn’t get up to much mischief at school,“ they laugh. But during the holidays, those were adventures! They went on hiking trips, hitchhiked all the way to the Tatra Mountains in Slovakia, most often on the back of a truck. They slept in haylofts, washed with water from a bucket. „Once we met two old women who asked: ‚Can you pray? Do you have fleas?‘ We answered truthfully – and they let us spend the night. In the morning we woke up covered in flea bites and scratched ourselves for about a week!“ they laugh.

Life paths diverge

After graduation, their paths diverged. Lída started working at a trading company and traveled extensively with her husband. Zorka went to study Polish at the Faculty of Arts and devoted herself to her family. Today she has four daughters, twelve grandchildren, and eighteen great-grandchildren.

Despite their different life paths, Lída and Zorka stayed in touch. Three remain from their group – two friends have already passed away. The last of the five, Maruška, comes to visit her former classmates at the Mukařov home.

Having someone to grow old with

Lída has been living at Cardinal Beran Senior Home for three years. She sometimes misses her loved ones; she has no children of her own, but her great-nieces visit her. Travel has remained her passion even in old age, though now she only travels with her finger across a map. As she does so, she recalls places tied to her personal memories.

Zorka moved in with Lída this past October. „Lída praised it here so much that I simply had to come,“ she says. She is grateful for her old age – and for her daughters, with whom she talks on the phone every day.

Both praise the care, good food, and environment at Cardinal Beran Senior Home run by the Caritas of the Archdiocese of Prague. The home is surrounded by a large garden full of flowers, trees, and birds, as well as a forest. Both women cannot say enough good things about the chapel. „Spiritual support is very important to me,“ Zorka emphasizes. Lída nods and adds: „Our friendship is also a great gift. Not everyone has someone to grow old with.“