Translation "11. My mother's death"

11. My mother's death

2
About the time and about myself


11. My mother's death

It always happens so suddenly. A person lived, you talked to him, you did something together with him, he cared for you and you loved him.
And suddenly that person dies and you will never see him again. You won't be able to say something nice to him or do something for him or together with him.
That is always hard and difficult to grasp, especially when the deceased person was (very) close to you, like for example your mother.
I am already used to the fact, that my mother calls me once or twice a week,
that I personally phone her too, hear her clear, commanding(teacher-like?) voice, buy her all her products and visit her either with my sister or alone.
And suddenly happens a pancreatitis attack, a sudden operation,
(it felt) almost as if she was doing better after the operation but then unexpectedly she suffocated and passed away. [this sounds a bit harsh though i don't know how to translate better]
Even though she was at an astonishingly high age of 93, which only few people in Russia reach, her death was still unexpected and to this day seems rather ludicrous.
And so I am still waiting for her call.

My mother lived a long and difficult life.
At the eve of the Great Patriotic War 1941-45 she, as a daughter of dissposessed(?) parents from Smolensk Oblast,
happend to be at Turkmens' Aul (a village in middle asia) at the age of 17, where no one spoke a word of Russian.
She started working at a school, where she tried to teach young Turkmen the Russian language, but she herself tried to remember the most important words of the Turkmen language,
to somehow hold the lessons and understand her own students.
The first year of the war was when her, since childhood, beloved fiance died at the front. And she was left completely alone in the midst of neverending deserts of middle Asia, unknown people and foreign culture.
Being depressed, she agreed to marry the head teacher of the school, an Azerbaijani, even though she didn't love him.
Her child was born. Her older sister, who didn't have kids, came to help her out.
But the relationship with her husband was getting worse, because his parents didn't like the fact, that their son didn't marry a Muslim but instead a Christian.
He proposed her mother to become a Muslim. She agreed and so my mother's husband left her.
Moreover the child got infected with dysentery and no hospitals existed in the village.
Together with her sister, they moved to another aul, with an hospital.
Since there weren't any horses for free in that small aul, they had to go 22 km by foot through the desert.
While they were walking the whole day through the sand and crossed the desert, the child died.
My mother told me, that at that time she didn't want to live anymore, but her bigger sister convinced her, that life isn't over at the age of 20.
She moved to another aul, to avoid meeting her ex-husband, and there she got a job as a teacher of the Russian language for non-Russian students.
My mother felt, that she was lacking the knowledge to be teaching Russian and literature and soon after the war she managed to go to a teacher training institute in Ashgabat, where she met a man who is now my father.
They got married and soon I was born. Her older sister, my aunt, continued to live together with them, helping out with the child.

When I was only one year old, a catastrophical earthquake in Ashgabat happend. It was late in the night.
My parents survived, because they had decided to take a walk outisde before sleep.
But me and my aunt were burried. I was told, that I unconsciously saved my aunt, because I was crying and calling for my aunt a minute before the quake happend.
Children, like animals, probably, feel the incoming catastrophes better.
When my aunt ran to me, the wall, near which her bed was placed, collapsed. But my cradle stood near the oven, because of that a kind of dusty shelter formed, where the ceiling collapsed and hit the oven.
At the time my parents where taking a walk, suddenly the soil started to rise to their legs and they even fell.
My mother couldn't understand, what happend, hopefully not a war again she thought. But my father explained to her, that it was an earthquake.
They hurried back. When my mother saw our collapsed house she fainted. This was the second time in her life she didn't want to live.
But soon after that, she and her husband started to dig through the ruins, with their bare hands and suddenly they heard the voice of my aunt and me crying.
With their hands soaked in blood and through complete darkness they managed to dig us out.
Our family was one out of not many who survived completely. A lot of families didn't survive, in a lot of families someone passed away and someone else survived. Ashgabat was 90% in ruins.
But the relationship with the south and the USSR was in a bad standing back then. And therefore they couldn't rely on help from them.
Also Stalin didn't want anyone beyond the boundary to know about the horrible earthquake, where around a hundred thousand people died.
So the information about the quake was very subtle and dim (unchewed), like "In areas of Ashgabat, the Turkmenish SSR, an earthquake happend, the amount of casualties is being confirmed."
More than a month, the survivors were living in tents, placed in the middle of the collapsed buildings. But the climate in Turkmen was heavy continentaly. Through the day it might be warm, but at night it was very cold.
Therefore a lot of people got ill. Additionally, food was scarce as well as essentials to live, like kerosene or blankets.

Finally, the teaching institute was moved to Chardzhou, a small Turkmenish town on the coast of Amu Darya, where my family was renting a room by locals there, until she got an appartment from her institute.
My mother started working at the school and finished her teaching institute in distant learning(away from campus).
My very first memories of my childhood is my mother sitting in front of abstracts and a stock of notebooks from her students.
She was always working a lot. Even in her holidays she tried to find a job in the teaching institute, reading Russian literature for distance learners.
And at the same time she also managed to give birth to two sond and one daughter.
Of course, my aunt was helping her, but my mother still spend a lot of time caring for her children.
I even remember, how my mother was always happy and hospitable. We were often visited by guests with different nationalities, and my parents visited them not too seldom.
Sometimes they took me with them and I saw, how to have fun and relax with friends, even when you don't have much money.
But in the 50ties in the USSR, I lived in difficulties and poor, affacted by the the remains of horrible destructions and victims of the war.
But, I suppose, on the other hand, the 50ties and 60ties were the best years for the USSR.
People still believed in the ideals of the Socialism and worked a lot, despite some hardships and being poor.
The first Young Festival in Moscow 1957, the first flight of the first cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, around the earth on the 12th April 1961. All this filled the hearts of the people with pride across the land.

After that, my family moved to south-east Kasachstan, into a town named Semipalatinsk on the river Irtish, where my father was given an opportunity to an interesting job in the Semipalatin Pedinstitut.
I remember the first difficult and cold years of Semipalatinsk, where we again had to rent uncomfortable apartments and after that live in tight communal apartments, until we got our three-room apartment.
It has to be said, that in the USSR you had the opportunity to get a national apartment for a perpetual lease for a miserable monthly payment, but for this one still had to work beforehand a few years*(3-8years), before one could get such an apartment.
The apartment we got, was on the verge of Semipalatinsk, in the western village. The apartment filled half the house with a little region on the side. [not quite sure about the last 3 sentences, turned out harder to translate than i thought at first...]
My mother instantly started to fill that region by planting vegetable- and fruit-trees. In this lies probably her christian origin.
We helped her a little, but she was the one who was primaly working there.
After school I moved to Leningrad and entered the SPbGU. -> Back then the LSU (Leningrad State University), today it's the SPbGU (Saint Petersburg State University).
Because of that I don't know the reason for my parents' divorce.
The message about the divorce was a very sad one for me, because I could never divide our family into two parts.
And honestly I was more on the side of my father, a smart and clever teacher in the Pedinstitut, but an absolutely unpractical person.
I feared that it would be hard for him to live alone. Sadly, that is exactly how it turned out to be.
And even though my brother visited him regularily and helped him, a few years after the divorce my father passed away.
But I saw, that my mother was happy with her new husband and eventually I forgave her.
Every person decides his life for himself.

After the collapse of the USSR, my mother stayed with her husband in Kasachstan and I was already living in St.Petersburg with my family and my sister.
My mother was working at the school, as well as in her garden, which she constructed with her new husband.
My brother fearing the Kasach nationalism, moved to the Ural, and my mother managed to keep the good relationship with the Kasachs and the Tatars, who made up more then half of the population of Semipalatinsk.
And only after the death of her second husband, my mother wanted to move to St. Petersburg, to live close to myself and my sister. Here she stayed the last 15 years.
As former teacher, she couldn't resist the urge to give instructions(advices). Sometimes that irritated my wife and my sister.
Adult women don't like it, when someone gives them advice, not even from people who are close.
But even me and they knew that all these advices, were given in good intentions, even though we didn't always agree with them.
A small apartment of my mother was on the first floor, and she, as a daughter of a christian, couldn't resist the urge to create a mini-garden in those 10 square meters. And spend her whole summer there.
And also she was supporting a good relationship with our relatives, who lived in different cities or even different countries.
She never forgot to congratulate anyone with their birthday, never forgot to send a small present and never forgot to be a little interested in their lives.
One day before her death, not feeling well after a heavy operation, she was interested in my life, how my children live and of course gave them advice.

We will all miss her, her optimism and her thirst for life.


Please read the original if you understand Russian!
(originally written and read by Evgueny Bokhanovsky, 2015) -> https://www.lingq.com/learn/ru/workdesk/item/10345958/reader/