in 1942 and sister Smiljka (b. 1921) in 1943. Ćopić dedicated a poem to her, Grob u žitu (). Ćopić met his future wife Bogdanka Ilić, nicknamed Cica, in 1945. Bogdanka Ćopić later became a pediatrician and the two were married in 1950 and remained together until his death. The final ten years of Ćopić's life they spent in the building across the Beograđanka tower in downtown Belgrade. Ćopić was an avid reader, a painting lover and praised film and theatre, even penning several screenplays. He liked Italian neorealism, movies like The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, The Wages of Fear and Disney's animated movies. He admired Miguel de Cervantes, Maxim Gorky, Miloš Crnjanski, Ivan Cankar, Miroslav Krleža, Isidora Sekulić, Oskar Davičo, Mihailo Lalić and called himself Lički Bosanac ("Lika's Bosnian"). Ćopić said that the loneliness is hard and that life is short so it should be spent in love, concord and understanding. Death On Monday, 26 March 1984, Ćopić called his longtime close friend Momčilo Srećković to come from Obrenovac to Belgrade. Srećković first met with Ćopić's wife, who told him that Branko had visited his doctor earlier that day and that he was depressed. Srećković found him around 16:00, sitting in Pioneers Park. They walked to Terazije, where they had cockta drink in the summer garden of the Hotel Moskva with Ćopić "opening his soul". He said that for several years he had problems writing, naming The Mallow Color Garden, The Adventures of Nikoletina Bursać and The Eighth Offensive as his favorites, and was sentimental about his childhood. According to Srećković, Ćopić was "talking a lot, more than I could memorize". They continued to Zeleni Venac and the Bridge of Brotherhood and Unity across the Sava, today called Branko's Bridge. Ćopić recollected his arrival to Belgrade, when he slept under the bridge (at the time, it was King Alexander Bridge, which was demolished during the war), saying "this bridge is my destiny". While showing the bench under the bridge where he slept back in 1936, Ćopić's glasses fell down onto the pavement below. Srećković went down the stairs to retrieve it, but when he climbed back to the bridge, Ćopić had already crossed the river to the other, New Belgrade side. Srećković hurried to catch him, calling him, but when he got close, Ćopić threw himself across the metal fence, falling on the pavement on the Sava's left