Farewell to Dr. András Huszák (1954-2023)

Dear Friend, Dear Colleague, Member of our Company’s Leadership Team, Treasurer!

We stand here in disbelief as we bid our final farewell to you, who have abruptly and prematurely ended your earthly journey. We find it difficult to accept, simply cannot believe that you have left us. Tomorrow, when we try to call the familiar number from memory, there will be no one to answer. We won’t receive your selfless assistance with our professional queries, nor can we invite you to spend the evening together, chatting cheerfully or comforting each other. Many of your colleagues and myself, including those who are just realizing it now, will miss what you brought to our everyday earthly lives as both a person and a professional – to quote my dearest poet: you made us children again. As an experienced physician who has witnessed many tragedies, the tears well up in my eyes once more as I think of you. Sometimes, unbidden sounds emerge that are not easily silenced.

When I think of you, who departed at the same age as my father once did, a quote from our childhood comes to mind: „It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” Those who knew you understand that you always lived by this principle, approaching your tasks, your duties, and the people around you with heartfelt empathy.

We met as adults, at my former and current workplaces, at the beginning of my professional career, where you were already putting the finishing touches on the building blocks of your expertise. From our first conversations, a sympathetic bond formed, leading to a lifelong friendship spanning 30 years. Alongside our shared and unwavering professional interests, human connections also formed, which, although established in adulthood, became as selflessly strong as those rooted in childhood. From the outset, I learned from you, both in terms of your professional knowledge and your approach to dealing with people:

I always relied on your expertise, complemented by professional experiences abroad and self-education, prioritizing patient care and the clinic. And every colleague who turned to you for guidance could rely on this. We all knew it: the respect and gratitude felt for you brought so many of your colleagues here. Behind your modest but resolutely held opinions, there was always a well-founded knowledge. Your patient-centered, synthetic, biological approach to treatment made your work unique. Thus, beyond your dental training, you also practiced refined general medicine. And with this perspective, you were always among the pioneers, innovating consistently throughout your life. This was evident when you were still a hospital doctor at the Szent Rókus Hospital, as well as when you treated patients at your prestigious clinic in Buda. However, you never let go of your connection to the hospital, supporting the few hospital doctors with your presence. But we often teased each other about being „inside or outside” the system! You generously used your connections to help me attend clinical professional training with one of Europe’s most renowned professors at that time, so that I could bring a new perspective to our work at home.

Your relationship with your colleagues and members of our company was legendary. In the clinic you built with hard, persevering work, your colleagues, including newcomers to the field, preferred to come, but never to leave.

But alongside this, one could sense the reserved humility of your inner world behind your always cheerful, proactive, industrious, good-humored, outward-facing demeanor. You, the polyglot musician, perhaps feared the end of our earthly existence. And so, you didn’t pay enough attention to yourself alongside your profession. For if you had been a little more selfish with us, perhaps… maybe… But you couldn’t. And when I thought you had likely overcome your illness and lay jokingly on the neighboring empty bed in your ward, waiting for you to return home… your wife called a day later to tell us that you had left us, choosing the spirit world. You are surely in a good place now. Knowing you, you have found peace. This I believe and know.

But for us, we had to remain here: as friends, colleagues, coworkers, and patients, bidding our final farewell to you, bowing before you for the last time, then leaving the cemetery, immortalizing our shared memories, making you eternal in the annals of Hungarian maxillofacial surgery.

God bless you, Rest in Peace, Dear Huszi, our friend András!

Prof. Dr. Dr. Ferenc Oberna