A heavy legacy

Once my husband and I were talking about our parents' destinies and how much they had in common. Then we started talking about grandfathers and great-grandfathers. And then some interesting details came up.

On Andrei's mother's side, his great-grandfather joined the Bolsheviks in the revolution and went with them to expropriate a large factory owner in Ivanovo.

The factory owner welcomed the "dear guests" with bread and salt. He served them vodka, having put poison in it beforehand. All were poisoned, except the Bolshevik great-grandfather, who, sensing something was wrong, managed to drink a pitcher of milk and did not die, but only went blind in both eyes.

My maternal great-grandfather also took part in the expropriation in the year 1927. He was found in the morning in a ditch, badly beaten and with a broken head. He was alive, but went mad and lived only a short time after that.

On Andrei's father's side, his grandfather, an infantryman, was wounded in the leg near Staraya Russa during World War II. Dirt got into the wound and gangrene set in. The 21-year-old surgeon Ilizarov cut off the wounded soldier's limb first up to the knee and then higher, but the gangrene did not retreat.

The doctors were sure that the soldier would die soon. And then Andrei's grandfather has a dream: he and his comrades are swinging on a huge swing with a deep pit underneath. From time to time his buddies slip off the swing and fall into the pit. Grandfather also fell. But at the last moment he managed to hold on to a rock and climbed out. The next morning his fever broke, he had an appetite, and he recovered quickly.

My paternal grandfather was a miner. While working, he was pulled under the conveyor belt and severely injured his arm - the tendons were torn and the bone shattered.

The doctor, fearing gangrene, wanted to cut off his mangled hand, but my grandfather would not let him. He was treated with folk medicine for a long time, and in the end amputation was avoided and the arm healed itself.

To continue the theme of amazing coincidences.

Andrei's maternal grandfather was born in Ivanovo, the city of weavers and brides. My maternal grandfather was also from Ivanovo, but only a small village in northern Udmurtia. Curiously, my grandfather's name was Slava, like my husband's father, and his grandfather's name was Mikhail, like my father. Both grandfathers came to Glazov when they started to build a secret military plant there. And both, as it turned out, were recruited by the state security agencies. I can't say anything about Andrei's grandfather, I just don't have enough facts, but my grandfather Slava, as I have already written, served in the Amur region during World War II, was a border guard at an outpost, fought with the Japanese, returned home only in the early fifties, and the KGB (security officers) immediately took him in hand.

I don't know if he could have refused to "cooperate" with them. Apparently not. But he did not want to help the Chekists. Once my grandfather got very drunk, stopped a truck and demanded that the driver take him somewhere. The driver refused. Then my grandfather pulled out a naghan and threatened him. After that, the driver reported the incident to the authorities, and my grandfather was chased out by the State Security Agency, and at the same time he was fired from the factory as an "unreliable man".

I think my grandfather did this on purpose. He went back to his village, married my grandmother, whom he had known before the war, and became the head of the local collective farm.

In the late 70s, my grandfather moved to Glazov with his family. He got a job again in the factory where Andrei's grandfather had worked all the time. In those years the town was actively built and developed. And so it happened that in 1977 both our grandfathers got apartments in a new building, only Slava on the ninth floor and Mikhail on the fourth.

I grew up in that house and I remember Andrei's grandfather very well, he always wore a military uniform. Of course, at that time I did not know who he was, but many years later, when I looked at my husband's family photo album, I immediately remembered him. I probably saw Andrei in the yard when I was a child (he often visited his grandfather), but who would have thought that this tall, intelligent boy with glasses would become my husband in the future?

No passport

It was the year 1991. My dad and I were sitting in our house at night, playing craps for slots and writing down the numbers that came up in a notebook. Whoever had the highest total won.

Dad was as lucky as ever, in high spirits, rubbing his hands together in glee.

But soon a shadow came over his face, he thought about something, and suddenly out of the blue he said that he wanted to become a bum.

At that time, the word "bum" had just come into common usage and did not mean a beggar, a lowly ragamuffin, but a person "without a fixed abode" - in fact, an eternal wanderer, a citizen of the world, a vagabond, which is what my father had always dreamed of being.

But I was a little afraid of such a wish, what if tomorrow my father would throw his backpack behind his back and disappear from home - how would my mother, Tanya and I live without him? And I began to dissuade him from this idea in every possible way. Dad waved his hand and said, "Never mind, I was just kidding".

Years passed. The day my mother died, we couldn't find her passport for a long time, we searched the whole house, but it was gone. The funeral home told us that if we couldn't find it, the registry office wouldn't give us a death certificate. So we started looking again.

At some point, my sister noticed a rolled up carpet in the corner, stuck her hand in the hole, and to everyone's surprise, pulled out the missing item.

Don't ask me how it got there, I don't know, it wouldn't have occurred to me to look for it there, but Tanya had a nose for such things and she helped us a lot that time.

But when my sister was gone, I had a kind of déjà vu. Tanya's passport was gone, too. "What, again?" - The girl from the funeral home was taken aback. "Where could it have gone?"

If only I'd known...

Tanya's bag was on the table, with her phone, lipstick and keys in it. But no passport!

My sister's body had not yet been taken to the morgue, it was here in the room. "Tanya," I begged, "you've played hide and seek enough, show me where it is!"

And then my eyes fell on the door of a secret alcove in the wall. I opened it. Inside, on the shelves, were jars of creams, jewelry, perfume, and among them, a lost document.

Dad lost his passport right before he died.

Maybe he put it somewhere and forgot about it, or maybe it was stolen.

Between you and me, Dad had two passports. Several years ago, he lost this important document and got a new one to replace the lost one. But then he accidentally found an old passport among the books. After Dad died, we could not find either of them, so we had to give Dad's pension card to the funeral home.

Whether that helped, or the fact that the registry office was then run by a woman who knew my father well, I got the death certificate.

But in the column "citizenship" there was a dash, which meant that without a passport my father was not recognized as a citizen of the Russian Federation. In fact, for the state he was a bum.

I was afraid that because of this dash there might be problems with the registration of the inheritance, but everything went well.

In a strange way, my father's longtime dream came true. His wish was to be a bum, and he got it.

So be careful what you wish for, or make your wishes clearer.

The magic of numbers

Almost all of my relatives left this world quite young. Some because of illness, others because of accidents and personal dramas.

My grandmother Luda died at 74, just a month before her birthday. My mother at 54, my sister at 34. Strange coincidence, isn't it? All three of them had an age difference of 20 years.

Another oddity is the similar dates of death.

Great-grandmother Matrena, grandmother Dusya and mother died in different months, but on the seventh day. Grandpa Slava and dad - on the ninth. Grandma Luda and Tanya were united by the number 31.

My family usually died in the summer or spring, during or on the eve of big church holidays - Easter, Trinity, Elijah's Day. I don't know how to explain it.

Besides, there was a suicide in every generation on my mother's side.

My grandfather Slava's brother hanged himself, and my grandmother Luda's brother hanged himself. My grandfather's nephew Tolik killed himself when he was only twenty. I know that black thoughts crept into my mother's soul, Tanya had them too, and so did her son and my young niece Lina. Sometimes I also felt the urge to kill myself.

Something sad, a kind of longing, came into my heart. Life seemed meaningless, people stupid, their actions cruel. I felt superfluous in a world where no one understood me.

I wanted to get rid of this weight, to end the agony, but I loved myself too much and had never gone further than fantasizing about how to do it. But my sister once cut her wrists for real.

My mother sent her to accounting school, paid for her tuition, but Tanya failed the final exam. She came home, locked herself in the bathroom and cut her wrists with a razor.

I don't think she really wanted to die, she probably just wanted to scare my mother into leaving her alone. The threat worked, and the sister was indeed left alone. The incident was forgotten.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Iron Hook

Many years later, my Aunt Nina told me that Tanya had almost committed suicide at the age of 24. My parents, as usual, hid everything from me (as I once did from them). My sister never talked to me about it either. Maybe she was ashamed, or maybe she didn't want to remember. The reason for such a rash act, as far as I could tell, was Tanya's second husband. He left her for another woman, and before that he insisted that Tanya have an abortion. But who knows what really happened that fateful day?

As soon as Tanya was alone in the house, she tied a rope to the chandelier and put a noose around her neck.

I know the rest of the story only from Aunt Nina's words. At the very moment my sister stepped into the void, my aunt was on her way to the dacha, and suddenly a picture flashed before her eyes: a noose with Tanya dead in it.

Before my aunt realized it, the "mirage" disappeared.

I think it really was like that, except for one thing. The iron hook to which the chandelier was attached broke, and Tanya collapsed to the floor before the knot in her neck had time to tighten.

Later I had seen the iron fragment in the ceiling, as well as the bent gardine, but I never learned the reason for the breakdown.

As for Aunt Nina, she insisted that sooner or later Tanya would finish what she had started.

I thought so myself, but we were wrong. My sister died in a different way. But I'll tell you about that later.

Not a moment of peace

When I was thirteen years old, I had a dream that my mother was gone.

The vision was so vivid that I woke up with a pounding heart and tears, and for a long time I could not come to my senses. When I finally realized it was just a dream and my mother was sleeping peacefully in the next room, I vowed to do everything in my power to keep my family alive as long as possible.

Mom, Dad, Tanya, the dog Lala - I couldn't imagine life without them.

It was like an obsession. I was afraid to take my eyes off them for even a moment.

It seemed that if I did, if I took my mind off them, if I relaxed, something bad would happen to them - a car would hit them, a brick would fall on their heads, or some other misfortune would happen.

When my mom or dad would be late for work, I wouldn't be able to rest from worrying, I'd look at the clock, I'd look out the window. And I would get more and more anxious by the minute.

I looked for the most unbelievable explanations for their tardiness. I wished that if I counted to a hundred and they didn't come, then something bad must have happened to them.

Usually, when I counted to ninety, my parents would come back. If they didn't, I would make up other reasons for their delay - just to get rid of bad thoughts. I told myself that one hundred was not enough, and that I should count to three hundred, and then multiply the result by three, and again by three, and never stop, or...

I was even afraid to think about what would happen if I didn't.

I can't tell you how exhausting that was for me!

Connected

That's when I decided to connect my family to me.

I had a hunch that I had the ability to somehow "see" people, to connect with them energetically and influence them mentally.

I felt this connection as an invisible tentacle, a bundle of filaments like electrical wires that extended from my belly near my navel.

It sounds strange, but I could use them to feel people from head to toe, the way insects sniff each other with their antennae to determine friend or foe.

Anyway, I pulled out my "cable" and "connected" my parents, my sister, and my beloved dog to me.

From now on, I could keep them under my watchful control at all times.

Even when I was in another city, I knew what was going on with my family, I could feel them with every cell. I wouldn't say it was a pleasant feeling, but at least I knew they were alive and well (or not).

I was willing to sacrifice myself and my energy to keep them alive because I got some semblance of peace of mind in return. I did not care what my family thought about it. I couldn't do it any other way.

Did my relatives have any idea that they were "connected" to me? I don't think so.

But I think my mother felt something like that, otherwise how could I explain that just before she died she asked me to let her go, to let her die in peace.

At that time, I myself began to doubt whether I was doing the right thing by holding people against their will. Wasn't I hurting them and myself?

But it took me a long time to decide to cut the invisible cord.

I knew my mother was dying, and I was afraid of losing her, but I also didn't want to torture her by forcing her to live with an insidious disease inside of her.

A premonition

My mother died in the spring, in May.

A week before she died, it was as if someone had grabbed me by the left subcostal region with their teeth and held me there without letting go. I even started to walk a little hunched over.

I had to write an article for the newspaper that day.

But before I went home from the newsroom, I decided to stop by my parents' house. I had already put the key in the lock and grabbed the handle, but suddenly I felt nauseous and sick to my stomach. I felt as if some force was pushing me out and preventing me from entering the house.

After standing at the door for a while, I turned to leave.

I didn't know that my mother was dying that very minute.

Maybe it was fear, a premonition of trouble. Or maybe my mother didn't want anyone to see her like this. If I had entered the house, I would have rushed to save her, to call an ambulance, but unfortunately it was useless. Nothing and no one could help her. Probably my mother knew about it and didn't want to let me in, didn't want to go to the hospital and didn't want to prolong the agony. Even my father didn't immediately notice that she was gone. He thought she'd just fallen asleep. In the morning he decided to take her blood pressure, took her hand, but it was icy, and then the truth was revealed.

I remember being struck for the umpteenth time by the contrast between life and death.

A dried-up corpse, bent with a hook (I couldn't believe that this empty shell was my mother), and a riot of May green outside the window, bright flowers on the windowsill.

My mother loved flowers, and she and my father were going to take seedlings to the dacha in the near future.

My dad couldn't accept that he was going to be alone forever, he just didn't want to believe it.

One night I went to his house. There were empty bottles in the corner, my father was sleeping drunk, and on the bed next to him was my mother's dressing gown, as if she had't gone anywhere, but was still with him...

Mom's Rose

It is said that a person's soul travels the earth for forty days after death, somehow letting those close to them know that it is here.

When my mom was gone, my cousin Olga had a dream that my mom called her and said: "Girls, don't worry, I'm fine!"

The night before the funeral, I also had a dream about my mother. In this dream, my family and I were at home waiting for the coffin to be brought from the morgue. Suddenly, the door opened and my mom walked into the room, alive and well, followed by our dog, Lala, who had died many years before.

Dad, Tanya and I looked at each other - what does this mean? Mom was dead, as far as we knew. But she was talking excitedly about something, as if she hadn't noticed our confusion. Meanwhile, I was trying to figure out what to do, whether to cancel the funeral or not?

Suddenly, my mother stopped talking, stood up abruptly, said goodbye to everyone, and walked to the exit. The last thing I remember is standing at the window watching her walk slowly away, across our yard, with Lala running ahead of her, wagging her tail happily.

After the funeral, I took my mother's tea rose home with me.

Although my mother loved flowers, they didn't grow well for her.

While she was still alive, she bought a rose from a flower shop and planted it in a small baby bucket. That green bucket with a stunted cut bush sat on her windowsill for a long time.

In a new place, the rose immediately produced two shoots, and soon a bud appeared, followed by another. But for almost a month it was motionless, as if frozen, not blooming.

My husband and I wondered when the flowers would appear.

Something told me it would happen on the fortieth day. And whether you believe me or not, on that day, the rose bud that showed no sign of life the night before suddenly bloomed in the morning. It bloomed with a rich color, like a peony - very pink. And three days later the second one bloomed.

I think it was Mom's soul saying goodbye to us.

Or maybe it was a sign.

That night I had a dream: my mother came to me and said: I'm waiting for Tanya and your dad.

I tried to convince myself that she meant her forty days, that she just wanted to see my father and my sister, so she asked them to come to her at the cemetery.

But deep down, I knew that wasn't what Mom meant. In fact, she was waiting for them on the other side.

The sun and the moon were shining in the sky

In winter, Andrei and I decided to go abroad, to the sea.

We went to a travel agency. Usually at this time of the year there are plenty of tourist vouchers, but now - absolutely nothing suitable. Finally we chose a hotel. The manager asked what date we wanted to start our trip - the seventh or the ninth of December? We decided to fly on the seventh.

The girl clicked the buttons and looked at the monitor, raising her eyebrows in surprise:

- I don't understand, a moment ago there were tickets and now there are none!

- Well, let's go to the ninth.

Click, click, click. No tickets!

We could only book tickets for the thirteenth of December. Okay, we'll fly on the thirteenth. But an uneasy feeling crept into my soul - something was wrong.

Shortly before, something strange happened at our home. Early in the morning, my husband and I were awakened by a loud banging noise. It was as if something heavy, like a cast-iron weight, had fallen from the mezzanine in the hallway to the floor - even the floorboards screamed.

What could it be?

We searched the whole apartment - nothing! Grandma Luda used to say in such cases: wait for trouble.

Late on Monday, December 9, the phone rang and a frightened woman's voice said that my father had had an accident.

My first thought was that he had lost his passport. (Dad had complained that he could not find it). No big deal, he can get a new one.

And then, like a bolt from the blue:

- Your father had fallen to his death.

Dad had been a tomboy since childhood, he wasn't afraid of death at all - he'd gotten out of so many dangerous situations that he'd finally come to believe in his invulnerability.

He boasted that he would never die.

He was a lucky man, he had a truly beastly sense. For example, he knew when to play cards. The workers in the factory often played blackjack for money, and if Dad felt that the day was "not his", he would not sit down at the gambling table.

But if he felt he was going to get lucky, he would, and on those days he never went home without a big win.

Restless by nature, my father became violent as soon as he got drunk. He couldn't sit still for a second, he was always looking for adventure. And of course he found it.

I still don't know what happened to him that night, what he was doing on the common balcony.

Did he jump off by himself? Did he slip? Did someone push him?

Every night in my dreams I'd ask him to tell me what happened. But Dad wouldn't tell me.

He just didn't seem to believe he was dead. He laughed: "You're kidding me, I'm alive.

I will never forget how we buried him - a quiet snowy field, wooden crosses - many, many crosses, and an open coffin with carnations glazed with frost.

And in the blue frosty sky, the sun and the moon were shining at the same time.

A forgotten camera

In his youth, my father had a passion for photography. Before going to the cemetery, my husband noticed an old film camera on the coffee table. Thinking that one of the guests who had come to say goodbye to my father had forgotten it, he put the camera in his pocket.

At the cemetery, it turned out that no one had the camera. And no one had seen it on the coffee table. Where did it come from?

Maybe it's Dad's joke, and he wants to take his favorite thing with him?

We put the camera in the grave with the coffin.

And here's the other thing: If we had taken a trip on December 7 or 9, who would have buried Dad?

I think the tickets disappeared for a reason.

It was as if someone unknown, who knew everything in advance, was giving us a sign: "You can't go, guys, it's not time yet".

Who came for the son?

On the eve of my father's death, my grandmother Dusya had a dream: the doorbell of her apartment rang. She opened the door and there was an old woman, my grandfather's deceased aunt from the village.

She was in a nightgown, barefoot, with disheveled hair, shivering from the cold like an aspen leaf. Grandma was stunned:

- Who brought you so far away, undressed? Come quickly, warm yourself, I'll give you some tea.

But the old woman silently shook her head.

Grandma Dusya saw that she wanted to say something to her, but she couldn't because she couldn't stop her teeth from chattering.

- Oh, my God! - My grandmother threw up her hands. - At least let me bring you the shawl.

She went to her room, and when she came back, her aunt was gone.

When my grandmother woke up in the morning, she didn't know if it was a dream or reality. She heard the doorbell ring. She looked through the peephole - no one. Who's there? - she asked. No answer.

She stepped back, but the doorbell rang again! Insistent, demanding.

Grandma thought it was the neighborhood kids playing a joke on her. So as soon as the bell rang again, she quickly opened the door. The stairwell was empty. No stomping feet, no laughter - dead silence. She felt uneasy. First the dream, now these doorbells - something had obviously happened. But what was it? And most importantly, with whom?

In the evening, my grandmother received a phone call telling her that her son had died.

So that was what the dead aunt in the dream was trying to warn her about!

To be continued