Reflecting on a Life That Passes

It is indeed very difficult to contemplate the life that slips away beyond our will, against our desire. We often speak of the life that is leaving us. We understand the inevitability of departure from life, including the departure of the people we love the most. We speak freely about it as long as everything is in order, everyone is alive and healthy.

In my long life, I have often had to bid farewell to friends, colleagues, and relatives for eternity. I buried my son at the age of two months. And time has not dimmed my sorrow. I buried my parents. And in all my life, I cried only twice. At my son’s funeral and at my mother’s funeral. My mother did not love me. She told me this frankly. There was some hidden reason for her lack of affection towards me. But I tried all my life to respect her and treat her with love.

However, I only understood and felt the terrible, destructive power of death with the death of my beloved. I write these lines, and my eyes fill with tears. It seems like nothing bad. We spent almost 72 years together. We first met when I was 18 and she was 17. Indeed, we had one small encounter in the spring of 1943. I happened to be among the guests at the memorial service for her father who died at the front. None of the hosts paid any attention to me. She noticed that I stood so lonely by the window, not knowing what to do. She approached me, greeted me, and asked in a calm voice, “Boy, you probably want to eat, don’t you?” She fed me. We talked. She was a year younger in school.

This meeting took place in South Ossetia, in the village of Kvemo Boli, Leninogorsk district. My village, where I was born, is also in the Leninogorsk district. So, our children’s homeland is South Ossetia. I promised to send her textbooks but could not keep the promise. She took me around the village. She told me in a calm voice about the villagers, where they get their drinking water. We talked calmly about many different things in our lives. For a 12-year-old girl, she was even too serious. Natural intelligence and concern for the village’s affairs were evident. I don’t remember how we said goodbye. But then there were my own worries about surviving the war years, and I almost forgot about her. And suddenly, she stands on the balcony of our neighbor.

Her mother had remarried our widower Sasha, whom we all called Shasha. A rather closed person. He had a fairly large room, and in front of the room was a balcony that was used as a kitchen. I returned from school, entered the yard, and saw a familiar face in a school uniform standing on Shasha’s balcony. I immediately felt uncomfortable that she was on the balcony of this Shasha. Beautiful, naive, trusting, and in Tbilisi. Knowing Tbilisi, I immediately thought of protecting this innocent creature. And in fact, the primary feeling of love was expressed in the feeling of her protection.

I don’t want to go into detail about her life in Tbilisi. It was not easy for her. She had to study. Pride did not allow her to remain uneducated. She studied at night school. She had to live on something. A 17-year-old girl. No profession. She broke through all these difficulties. We probably started kissing six months after arriving in Tbilisi, but no more. Further was strict. Interestingly, we never said, “I love you.” It was expressed in our looks, relationships, addresses. We loved each other without loud words. I helped her in every way I could. The main thing is she did not feel defenseless.

Almost two years of our communication, and she never asked me if I was going to marry her, and I never asked myself if I was going to marry her. I still did not understand the depth of my feelings. I just wanted to be with her constantly, to see her, to feel her. I have already written that when we went to our native places together. We were together in my village for the holiday on August 28th. And against the backdrop of our mountains, forests, seeing this Georgian beauty, I realized that I could not live without her.

In the spring of 1950, I asked if she would agree to become my wife. It was in Tbilisi, in the city recreation park. We sat on a bench. And not at all as shown in the movies, from that day I consider her my wife, but she believes that she is a wife only from the moment of registration in the registry office, in Odessa on Moldavanka from September 27, 1952. At that time, we had no one. No witnesses, no acquaintances, no friends, and not a penny in my pocket. And I had to go to school on October 1st. She was without money, without acquaintances, in a stranger’s kitchen, in a corner. She endured it only because she loved.

When I remember that only she could endure for the sake of love, I am simply amazed. Being the wife of an air defense officer is a serious test, and I will say from my service that not all women could withstand it. At the same time, we raised four wonderful daughters. And it was all her. The death of such a close person makes one think a lot. I really love her, but when she was next to me and I could talk to her at any time, I did not think about the strength, the level of my love for her. I did not understand how much I loved her. Her death made me feel the depth of my love for her. I did not lose a wife, I became an orphan in the full sense of the word. She was everything to me that a woman can be to a man. She was my wife, friend, sister, mother. She was my other half. I am now like a bird without a second wing.

While we were together, I understood the meaning of life, but now life has become uninteresting to me. There are children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren. They take care of me and very strongly. I understand all this, but I am lonely. There is no one else who could replace her voice, the touch of her hands, her look at me, no one to remember our past with. She is gone and will never be back. This is terrible. No, death is not what scares me, but the fact that she has disappeared forever from my life, that is what is scary. We never really think about what death is. It only comforts me that they will lay me next to her, and we will be together forever.

Of course, I understand that it’s not just the last years, but the last months, weeks, and maybe even days of life. Death is a tricky thing and most often hits unexpectedly. So I reflect on my past life, on my love for my wife. I want to say that despite a difficult childhood, youth, not an easy military service, I am a happy person that I was honored with such great and beautiful love as my Georgian beauty dedicated to me. Perhaps our love was so strong because we are children of war. The harsh pre-war, war, and post-war years did not allow our parents to be more tender, loving parents to their children. The struggle for life to survive in these difficult conditions left no room for tenderness. And a child needs to receive love. And it was my Zhenya who gave me the love that I was deprived of in childhood, in youth. For the first time, I felt tender, sincere, selfless, and boundless love for myself from Zhenya. Maybe that’s why I find it so hard to cope with her departure from life. Her love made me a husband, a father, a man who honestly fulfilled his duty, and her love helped me move forward in service. I could not allow myself to look worse than the husbands of other women. My wife had to be proud of her husband. And I believe that God gave me such a fate. I dreamed of dying in her arms and would have been happy. But knowing her, it would have been an unimaginably heavy blow for her. I am stronger. I will endure and come to her forever.

It was not easy for me to write all this. I wrote everything with tears in my eyes. But descendants must know what we were like.