I was too young to remember my birth. My mother was 36 years old when she gave birth to me. And in the Soviet Union they called such women old-born. Maybe it was the same in other countries-I don't know. My mother gave birth to me on the morning of March 9, and the night before, my grandmother, my mother's mother, named Susanna, who, as you correctly understood, I had never seen, died in our house. So often in life, one family member dies, and another is born to replace him.
It wasn't until many years later that I learned that Grandma Susanna wasn't feeling well; I think she had expected her passing. When she went to bed, she blindfolded herself so as not to frighten my brother and sister in their sleep. The bed was wide with a feather duvet and everyone liked to sleep on it. Grandma slept with my grandson, my older brother Fedia, 11 years old. Fedia woke up in the morning: my mother was in the maternity hospital, grandmother was dead on the bed, my sister Lena was awake, crying and asking for food, but no one was home...
I had to go out on the landing and call the neighbors for help. I can imagine what psychological trauma my brother received, I feel very sorry for him; he was a good man. We were not close with him because of age difference, and when I grew up, he went to the army, served in the Northern Fleet, and with all his soul he loved the sea, was a real sailor.
And meanwhile, my mother was with me in the maternity hospital. I was born with long curly hair, but unfortunately, I was born with some infection and my mother had to stay with me for 10 days in infectious diseases hospital. I had IVs in my head and I was so calm, I didn't even cry. The pediatrician came, as I was a newborn, and asked very much that my mother give me to her to bring me up. The doctor was married, but for some reason could not have children of her own. And she liked me very much, she came to admire me, brought my mother fresh fruit, but my mother did not give in to persuasion. So she ended up with three children, two older children by her first husband and the third me by another husband, my father.
My mother's first husband was a Lithuanian, she met him after the war, when he served in the Northern Fleet. Then he stayed in the North because of high wages, met my mother and they had two children. My husband's name was Ivan, young, redheaded, but he liked to drink. Ironically, my mother never drank, not even a little bit. My mother had had enough of living with an alcoholic and decided to file for divorce. Ivan went to his parents in Lithuania, did not pay child support and did not visit his children. In fact, his parents, knowing about the existence of small grandchildren, never came to visit them. So my sister Lena and brother Fedya died, never having seen their paternal grandparents.
It is another tragedy for children to be abandoned by their ancestors. Now, as an adult, I can imagine what was going on in their souls, living away from their own father and his parents and having no correspondence. Children abandoned, thrown out of their lives like blind kittens by adults.
My mother's name was Anastasia. Kindest in character, loving everyone, but unlucky in life. As once in one of the churches I saw an icon of Saint Anastasia - a great martyr and realized that my mother was exactly like that. How all important it is to choose the right names for your children, so as not to pass on someone else's fate to them.
My second husband, my father's name was Nicholas. He was handsome, tall, athletic, with curly hair. Strong physically and a very confident man. But my father had a very difficult destiny, which left a huge imprint on his character and his whole life.
He was born on the day of St. Nicholas on the Christian calendar December 19, 1927 in the family of my grandmother Anna Nikiforovna. My favorite and unforgettable for a moment grandmother: kind, bright, caring and very much believing in God. This faith in God helped her all her life. She bore two sons, was married to my grandfather, but at the age of 29 was left a widow, and from the severe stress of losing her husband her legs failed and she began to walk with a cane.
A young woman, only 29 years old, with two teenagers in her arms, without work or money, her husband murdered as a traitor during the bloody terror of the 1930s in the USSR. And then she lived another 60 years, unable to move around even in the apartment, because her legs were hardly extendible, but she was very sociable and I have never seen such an old person. Every day someone was sure to come to her to check on her: to bring some wood to heat the stove, to bring some groceries, to bring water, to just talk... She was never alone, always in the center of events and attention of others. She smiled, treated everyone to whatever she could and always thanked everyone. She prayed to God constantly, she was an Old Believer by faith, all her clan were Old Believers.
I remember that she always told me about her parents, my great-grandparents. She called them Papushka and Mammy. Only old Russian people of the 19th century and early 20th century honored their parents so deeply. Later I read the novels of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky and noticed that his characters always addressed each other as Daddy, Mommy, Grishonka, Vanechka... In this I saw love, kindness and respect, which nowadays is practically absent even among relatives, to say nothing of unfamiliar people.