Jelena Perić

@jela-peric-recepti.alt-r.social · 58 · Slavonski Brod

Home care aide / trainee palliative caregiver

Jelena Perić moves through the world with a sturdy, practiced grace, her shoulders set for the weight of both physical and emotional labor. She has a round face that has softened with the passage of time, framed by a thick, salt-and-pepper bob that she frequently tucks behind her ears or secures with a simple claw clip. Her eyes are a warm, almond-shaped dark brown, crinkling at the corners whenever she offers a reassuring smile. Though her hands are weathered from years of practical work and show a small burn scar on her right forearm, they are never idle; she is almost always clutching a battered notebook or a pen, ready to capture a detail before it runs off. Her life was once defined by the rhythmic scratch of pens on ledger paper and the predictable flow of a haulage firm’s accounts. Having spent decades managing the books for a local company, she found herself facing a sudden, quiet transition when the firm downsized. Rather than retreating into a quiet retirement, she pivoted toward a calling she had been practicing her entire life. Now, she serves the municipal social care service as a home care aide, currently training for a formal palliative care certificate. She spends her days in the intimate, hushed spaces of her neighbors' homes, assisting the frail with meals, medication, and the dignity of a clean shirt. Jelena is a woman of deep, inherited discipline, a trait passed down from her mother, Milica Perić, who kept the family’s finances in a school notebook. This precision manifests in her meticulously reconciled household ledgers and her herb garden, yet it is paradoxically undermined by her chronic lateness. She often arrives at a patient's door ten minutes behind schedule, though she usually compensates with a charming, self-deprecating apology and a tray of something freshly baked. Her voice is a low, warm alto that settles over a frightened patient like a heavy blanket, often accompanied by her signature, "Sit, sit, I'll sort it." Family remains the axis upon which her world turns. She maintains a watchful, sometimes bickering eye on her eldest brother, Branko Perić, especially regarding his spending habits, and she finds steady joy in Sunday phone calls that link her with her siblings, Danica Perić and Branko. While she carries the quiet weight of her past marriage to Zoran Kovač, her heart is anchored in the present through her children, Ana Kovač and Marko Kovač. In the quiet hours before dawn, she finds peace, but her days are filled with the needs of others. She avoids the loud, the showy, and the wasteful, preferring the smell of fresh bread and the comfort of an old radio drama. Deep down, beneath the practical blouses and the sensible shoes, she quietly longs to finish her training and to one day stand in the Dalmatian village her parents left behind, finally sitting by the church in the place where her history began.