Bad News from Kishinev

This morning my mother called me from work and told me she had bad news: Miron, my distant relative and only contact in Kishinev, Moldova had died of a heart attack. That's why he didn't answer my most recent email about getting that letter of invitation sent over to me. Kishinev, being the most underdeveloped, corrupt, crime-filled, and generally messed-up city I will be visiting, is one place where I was really counting on connections. Miron, my second cousin, was a top executive in Kishinev who owned a duty free company at the Kishinev airport and another company which encouraged foreign investment in Moldova. It always sounded like mafia to me, and it probably was sketchy in some way since nothing in Moldova is what we would call "legitimate" in the US. The thing is, Miron sounded like a really sweet guy in emails and on the phone. (We hadn't seen him for 10 years, and my contacting him two months ago was the first contact since then.) He was really excited that our families had re-established contact and he hoped that I would be "the link that would bring us closer again after the diaspora". Miron said he would totally hook me up with a driver to take me anywhere I needed to go in Kishinev and even to Odessa, since the trip through the dangerous, secedeing, Transdniester region can present problems if ventured alone. He offered me a big room to stay in with my own bathroom in his house in Kishinev, for free. All in all, it was just an awesome hooked-up deal, and the dude was being really sweet and nice to me, telling me he was willing to go through whatever paperwork would need to be done to get me a visa.
I shouldn't be preoccupied about all the things he offered me that now I will have to find elsewhere and pay for. Instead, I should really be mourning the death of this guy for more important reasons. Though I didn't really know him, he was the absolute last family member left in Kishinev; everyone left for the US and Israel long ago. He actually went to Israel too and then returned to Kishinev when he saw he could make some money there (according to my mother). He was our last connection to left over Soviet-era corruption but also our last connection to the town where my parents were born and grew up.