My grandmother didn’t love winter. And she often repeated that her worst nightmare was to die in winter. We laughed at these words at home. I said, “Listen, to die in winter isn’t so offensive – it’s cold, snowy, hands and feet freeze, nothing good, so you can die quietly. But to die in summer is offensive indeed! Everything blooms but you’re not there!”
Grandmother listened to our jokes, doing household chores and invariably answered the same, “If I die in winter, people will struggle to dig the grave. The soil is frozen, the shovels will bend until the grave will have been dug”.
Grandmother died in the summer peak – July 5. Before that, she had suffered from a poorly done, unsuccessful operation. Mother drove granny to the district centre hospital, for some reason, without informing us. The hospital was poorly equipped with nasty conditions. A doctor clearly said about money. On the spot. Mother promised money in three days. When my sister and I had to come home. She didn’t want to disturb us beforehand, she told us later. All three days, the doctor paced around my mother who was sitting next to grandmother and asked whether the granddaughters who should have brought money arrived. I arrived – and a surgeon together with anesthetist materialized immediately. I even didn’t have time to greet granny. Of course, I gave them money.
Later, our guesses were proved – grandmother’s operation could have been done differently, with more sensitive methods. Not to undermine so much the quality of her last months.
Grandmother passed away quietly, on Sunday morning. We gathered for funerals. It was hot, the roses bloomed in our yard, the wild cherry riped on the big tree in the middle of the yard. Everything as she liked. And she died when she wanted to. In summer.
Since then I feel some strange and mystical bounds with my granny. I saw her in dreams just several times in twenty years after her death. And every time before I had some life-changing events. As if to warn. She cared for me.
I’m not a religious person. I don’t go to church. But once, in St. Petersburg, having succumbed to the company’s influence, I went to Oleksandr Nevsky Lavra. Like everyone, I bought a candle. Not knowing the saints in the icons, I went to walk around the lavra, choosing the image that I most liked. Chose, came up, lit a candle and only after that I noticed that it was a saint with my grandmother’s name… I’ve never cried my hearts so bitterly as in front of the icon with my grandmother’s name…
Then, I saw my granny in my dream at night. That was the hardest period of my life. In my dreams, I told grandmother about all my troubles. She listened attentively to me. The way she did when she was alive. She nodded and said, “Know what? Send them all to hell. Don’t listen to them. Listen only to yourself. And do it so that you were well”. She always said it – send all your problems to hell.
I woke up with these words. Somehow everything made sense. And I remembered – listen to yourself and do so that you were well.
Grandmother wasn’t a religious person either. She went to church only at Easter. She said, “I go because people will judge”. She had a friend – neighbor granny Melanka. A religious fan. She didn’t miss any service in the local church. Granny Melanka visited my grandmother on Sundays, when Melanka went back from the church, they were sitting together, talking and drinking wine. Melanka tried to convert my grandmother to religion. To go to the church together. And periodically this dialogue between them took place: “Melanka, you’re so pious, but your children aren’t happy”, my grandma started when the friend’s pressure was unbearable.
It is worth saying that both Melanka’s adult children suffered from alcohol abuse that caused problems in their families.
Melanka was silent for a while. And then she answered the same, “Know what, Pasha, God challenges the ones he loves. We must accept everything humbly.”
My grandma didn’t believe in this theory and didn’t accept anything humbly.
When I grew up, we talked a lot. And she told me about her relationship with God. “I’m very upset with God. Very upset.”
I wondered, “How can you be upset with God? Is he your neighbor or relative? And actually, he doesn’t exist, does he? What a whim do you have, granny?”
Grandmother’s husband tragically died. At the age of 39 years. He drowned in the sea. He went there with his brother who came from afar and terribly wanted to go immediately to the sea and to swim. All my relatives lived in the village which is on the coast of the Black Sea, in the south of Odesa region – there where the territory of Romania was. Grandfather had an ill leg. He didn’t want to go to the sea at that time. But his brother insisted. I still don’t know what happened. Most likely, he got a cramp in his foot. And that’s all.
The grandfather, who passed away long before my birth, was a good man and husband. Grandmother didn’t talk a lot about him. But we knew from neighbors and from her that he didn’t raise his voice in the family, not talking about domestic violence which was rather common in those times. Grandmother and grandfather were poor as church mice but they lived together friendly, in love and peace.
Do I have to say that the loss of the golden man, that’s how grandmother called him, undermined her faith in God forever?
My grandmother had never married again. And my questions were bugged out like an annoying fly, “Everyone has own children to care about. My children won’t be loved by any man. And there’s no one like Oleksa…”.
Grandmother almost repeated the fate of her mother, also a widow. Great grandmother lost her husband at the age of 28 and remained with three little children on her hands. He disappeared during the first civil war. And she lived alone for 60 years, rejecting all marriage proposals. Grandmother was also alone for 40 years, until her death…
Grandmother had an interesting and indistinctive relationship with her daughter-in-law, her son’s wife. Grandmother always, in all situations took the side of her daughter-in-law. When she argued with her husband, she went to her mother-in-law. Grandmother scolded her son without clarifying who was right or wrong in each specific case. She believed that the husband should take care of his wife and never hurt her. That, in fact, was the grandmother’s husband…
Grandmother baked puffy loaves of bread and “vasyli” (we called small crispbreads this way) and carried them still warm in her apron through the whole village – to the daughter-in-law. And she baked delicious and my favorite pies with brynza in the oven, made from dough on wine yeasts – we called it zatirka. I ate it only when grandmother was alive…
My grandmother made it see my daughter – her great-granddaughter. She loved her so much. And she always complained that the child wasn’t dressed warm enough from her point of view.
“The child is messed and undressed, give her a scarf or she will have an earache”, she always lamented.
We laughed because the wind was gentle and couldn’t cause an earache at all.
Grandmother always took care about us. Children and grandchildren were her sense of life. She loved us, understood and didn’t berate us.
I stubbornly haul grandmother’s chest around with me. Moving from one place to another. From one home to another. The chest was redecorated by my husband and painted by my friend. That chest is grandmother’s dowry. Her mother gave it to her when she got married. In 1940. Important dates were written on the lid of the chest: the birth of children, for example. I loved to look into that chest when granny wasn’t at home. I learned to unlock it secretly and gazed at treasures hidden in it. There, grandmother had a pile of clothes “for death, for you not to look for it when the time will come”. Actually, all women of her generation did it. There were stacked up woven carpets, shreds of fabric, colorful handkerchiefs and scarves, festive outfit.
Grandmother’s chest is mine now. I know that grandmother would definitely like that I didn’t throw it away but kept it to myself. I save the illusion of grandmother’s presence in my life.
Grandmother had her favorite delights – halwa and mashed cold beans seasoned with fried caramelized onion. If halwa was okay, beans with sugar were too much for me.
And grandmother, having done all her household chores, took a plate with cold sweet beans and enjoyed it. Dainties from the times of the hungry childhood.
She also liked to take a crust of fresh bread, go to the vineyard, sit next to the bush and eat grapes biting the bread. It was a full meal for her. Or watermelon with brynza. Or tomatoes with brynza. She liked it. And I liked everything that she liked. Apart from sweet beans.
Grandmother was thin and tender, she weighted 45-50 kilos all her life. She moved quickly, managed to do everything, almost didn’t get sick.
Also, she sang beautifully. Her duets with daughter-in-law are still remembered in the village. They often sang together at different family parties. None of her four grandchildren can sing. At all. But now my grandson and granddaughter sing. And I’m pleased when I listen to them. It’s like hello from my grandmother…
I’m writing this now and realize that her image, her habits and her voice start to fade in my memory… But I find myself thinking that when I lack the words out of happiness or misunderstanding when I have to describe a process or some problem, I remember her proverbs, her phrases, her comparisons. I speak her language. Because there’s no better way to say it. Because the words of childhood stay forever with you.
And I want to take after my grandmother at least for a half. And I want my grandchildren to save the feeling of warmth with which I’m trying to embrace them. Like my grandmother embraced me.
Because without the feeling of family warmth it’s harder to live.
Zoya Kazanzhy