How I knew death. Real stories from our readers

One day we will know that we are ending. We just end up like books. Or candy in a vase. Or like a day and a month. This revelation comes at many different ages and in many different ways. We asked our readers to tell us how they met the Great Separator personally.

When I was 4 years old, my great-grandmother died in my arms. She was 96. I came to her room in the evening to call her for dinner. She got out of bed, sat down, wanted to get up, but began to gasp for air and fall back. She fell back onto the bed and that was it. I called my grandmother - her daughter. It turned out that the great-grandmother had died. Then everything went according to plan: an ambulance, a death certificate. My aunt and grandmother washed the body and it was kept at home until the funeral.

They didn’t hide anything special from me, and in general they didn’t pay any attention to me. Fed, feet warm, went to bed on time - that’s the most important thing.

I was five or six years old. Winter, big icicles. My grandmother and I went to Mashstroy to buy groceries. An icicle came off and killed a man who was walking a couple of steps ahead. It just pierced the skull. I remember that a little blood spilled out, it was so black.

I had very little experience with death as a child. Grandmother herself avoided this topic as best she could and protected me from it in every possible way. Even mentioning death again was not allowed.

My great-grandmother died when I was 5 years old. She died in the hospital, where she lay for quite a long time, but they only took me there once or twice. I didn’t see her dead, they didn’t take me to the funeral. They told me to think that she “seemed to have left, you’ll understand when you grow up, it’s too early to think about it.” She cried quietly, of course.

The first time I saw a person I knew dead was when I was already 14 years old - our school physics teacher died. This was a terrible shock for me, I spent several days in almost constant hysterics, went to a funeral, and couldn’t go to physics classes for another whole quarter - I sat down at my desk and immediately started crying. As a result, my mother got some kind of certificate, and I was released from these lessons.

Then I wrote a bunch of poems, prayed, and somehow got through it, in general. But soon after that, my fear of death (I don’t write “as a result of this” because I didn’t connect these two events, I just thought about it now) developed the most severe. To the point of such a paradoxical reaction that I seriously thought about committing suicide, just so that this hellish horror would no longer visit me.

I killed a kitten. He ran, and I slammed the door in front of him.

My mother scared me of death when I was a child. In children's films there were orphan heroes, and when watching them with me, my mother repeated that if I behaved badly, she would die, and I would remain an orphan, go to an orphanage or to my stepmother. Then she did this thing: she lay down on the sofa, turned away, said - that’s it, I’m dead. And she didn’t respond to my screams and attempts to “revive” me, stir me up or hug me. This could be caused by insignificant offenses, like not putting away books, or by serious whims (in my mother’s opinion), like refusing to go to the doctor. One time I screamed so loudly that my neighbor came and my mother jumped up to open the door and came to life.

I saw a shepherd puppy hit by a train. She simply hit him in the temple with a step and he instantly fell. I watched the desperate roar of the little mistress and her father, who shook the shepherd dog to make sure it was fatal. For me it was just an interesting scene; I didn’t feel any sympathy or fear. I was about five years old.
Then, at the age of 8, I was sent to the Smolensk village, to my maternal grandmother’s aunt. In the part of the hut that was allocated to us there was a place for food. A table pushed close to the wall, decorated like a school wall newspaper - clippings from “Funny Pictures” and “Crocodile”. And there was also a “photo report” from a village funeral. Black and white photos of the procession, an open coffin with the white face of the deceased, mourning women in headscarves, holding someone by the hands. They explained to me that this man is the son of the old woman with whom we are visiting; he was stung to death by bees while drunk. I looked a little askance at these “Victorian” photos, devouring eggs with butter and cocoa, but without much fear, rather with bewilderment, “Why is this here?..”

I was five years old. In the summer, my grandmother and I went to visit her relatives. It so happened that her sisters and brothers lived in the same village not far from each other. Moreover, this was a mining region. We celebrated the holiday “Miner's Day” - we set a big table, invited all the relatives and especially honored and made toasts in honor of one of my grandmother's brothers who worked in the mine. And a couple of days later, this same brother was repairing something in the basement of his house and reached into the switchboard. The wires were not in order, he was electrocuted and died instantly.

I remember that his coffin stood on the same long table where just a few days before people were sitting and having fun. And I just couldn’t understand it - I remember him very well as a living, loud man, and then one day - he’s dead and they’re going to bury him, and my grandmother is sobbing and can’t stop. This is what made the greatest impression - the speed of the “change of states”, so to speak...

We had a lot of cats, but we didn’t think of sterilizing them, and we didn’t have any money. Cats regularly gave birth to kittens, and my parents regularly drowned them, and each time it was a great tragedy. The bucket was filled with water, I was locked in the room, cat squeaks were periodically heard from the corridor for about half an hour, then everything calmed down and an inconsolable scandal began with the whole family.

My first brush with death was when I was just one year old. I was left with my grandfather, who loved me very much - I was the first granddaughter. He lay down on the bed, put me between him and the wall so that I wouldn’t fall, and died. I sat there for half a day while my grandmother came home from work.

I can tell two stories at once, over two generations. Our street ends at a cemetery. It’s old, but not completely abandoned; I myself buried my grandmother there next to my great-grandmother two years ago. This is not a scary cemetery, overgrown with trees, behind it is a wasteland, behind the wasteland is a hill from which it is good to fly kites. The sea is visible. Previously, during my mother’s childhood, people were often buried there, and the processions were accompanied by funeral music! – stretched and stretched under the windows. Every week, consistently. The children, including their mother, perceived this as part of life and even, in some cases, as entertainment. But the adults didn’t want to have so much fun, they wrote complaints - in the end they began to drive by without an orchestra.

I myself faced death in second grade. We were seated at the same desk as the boy. His name was Vitka, he was blue-eyed, strong, cheerful, hooligan, smart, and loved to read, just like me. This was probably my first love. We were still too children then to make friends; if we had grown up a little, I would have been friends with him the way I was friends with others later. But I grew up alone. During the winter holidays, he died while sledding and flew onto the roadway.

Trite: my great-grandmother died. I was 4 years old. Before that, according to my grandmother, I was often dragged to funerals, but the first one I remember was my great-grandmother’s funeral. I was very offended then that they didn’t take me to the cemetery, but left me at home to lay out spoons.

When I was about 5 years old, it seems, we went to visit my aunt, my great-grandmother’s younger sister, in the Vladimir region - she had her own house, a large old garden, a rather vicious dog named Parovoz and several cats - of which I liked the most when she was just a kitten (he was probably six months old) - Tuzik. My aunt had a rather tense relationship with her neighbors, I don’t know what it was all about, the usual neighborly squabbles... But some time after we left, she wrote in a letter that Tuzik had been killed - she found him literally chopped into pieces. parts, on the porch.

We went with my grandfather to the forest at the dacha and a terrible thunderstorm began, with a pressure drop, with hail, with a storm. It was quite creepy; my grandfather found a suitable Christmas tree and literally threw us under its lower branches. And then he lost sight and his heart finally couldn’t stand it - he had a heavy heart. Then I barely remember how I ran from the forest, how they found people to carry my grandfather out of the forest, how they called an ambulance. I remember that I was hanging on the window, and inside my grandfather was lying in a chair and the doctors were throwing up their hands - they say, everything they could... I was five.

I have a wonderful concept of death. Not about the dead - about the transience of existence, frailty and everything else.
I was about five years old. In the summer, dad put me in a boat and said that we were sailing to a cemetery (relatives on my dad’s side were buried on the other side of the Western Dvina, after the collapse of the Union, now it’s Latvia and you can’t go there without a visa, but before it was just a stone’s throw away, everyone was visiting each other swam). Imagine - a sunny day, a huge river (or so it seemed in childhood). We swim there and tie up the boat in a local willow forest. To get to the cemetery you need to climb 100-150 meters along a grassy slope. And so I rise, the grass is taller than me, it smells of the sun, the heated earth, we go out onto the path - and there someone has cut the grass for personal needs and a strong smell of hay is added to everything. The sky is blue, the clouds are light, I’m wearing my favorite red sandals. Simply a delight. And somewhere at this moment of supreme delight, dad turns to me and says: “You have eyes like your grandmother.” The one whose grave we are going to. And somehow it came together harmoniously in the child’s brain: yes – grandma’s eyes, she died, someday I won’t exist either.

I will definitely write a story about this. Because it's wonderful. Still.

She was in the hospital. There were six of us in the ward - five schoolgirls, from primary to sixth grade, it seems. And a little four-year-old girl Irishka. Her mother came to see her every day.

And so Irishka died. For the last week she had difficulty opening her eyes. And when she raised her eyelids, she looked terrible. I don’t know what kind of bouquet of illnesses there was, I remember that there were serious problems with my heart.

One night we woke up from her screams. And in the morning the bed is empty. Let's go see the nurses. They hide their eyes, count thermometers, and don’t answer questions. Then the head of the department came to work, gathered us in the room and told us that Irishka was in intensive care. Less than an hour later we were told that she had died.

Before that, I also encountered death, but somehow it didn’t affect me. Even when my beloved old neighbor in the communal apartment died, they somehow managed to isolate me from this and soften the news of death. And then it hit hard.

When I was 8 years old, I picked up a kitten. His belly was torn open, I wanted to get him out, my mother assured me that he would die with us, and that his mother cat might find him there. On the third day he died.

When my mother died (I was five years old), I didn’t understand at first. And then my grandmother explained that she would never return, and I couldn’t help but believe it, I was happy, although I was ashamed (because she beat me, and I realized that since she didn’t come back, they wouldn’t beat me anymore). And then I accidentally read a book about the infinity of time and the universe and realized that every moment of time passes forever... And when my grandmother died, it was really terrible, because now I knew that she would never return. and the people to whom they gave me gloatingly said that “now she is nowhere and there is no one to protect you”...
In general, I was always very strange and death fascinated me. I could stand for a very long time and look at dead birds, for example.

I became acquainted with death early.

When I was two years old, my grandfather died. Six months later, my grandmother will follow him. Another six months later - my uncle and at the same time - the old dog, who was my closest creature, closer to my mother. I remember all four of them clearly, and I remember how they faded away from cancer. I remember how my grandmother prayed that death would come to her. They didn’t take me to the funeral and didn’t let me say goodbye, but I understood everything - people and animals live, and then their time comes and they die. I was very sad that I would not see them again.

When I was four years old, I found a sparrow chick that had fallen from its nest in the forest. He couldn't fly, but he had already fledged. I planted him in the grass and immediately tripped and stepped on him. He died instantly. I realized that I had killed him, and then I couldn’t recover from it for a long time. All living beings have seemed terribly fragile to me since then.

When I was five years old or so (before school), my second grandmother told me that good people go to Heaven and bad people go to Hell, and explained what “bad people” are: those who lie, fantasize, make things up , they are lazy, do not pray every time before eating and going to bed, eat meat on Wednesdays and Fridays, and so on. I realized that I was bad and would not go to Heaven. I began to fear death and could not sleep at night. And then I heard somewhere the phrase “when there is no death, I am, when it comes, I will no longer be.” This idea - that we will definitely miss each other with death - was so strong on my soul that I repeated it to myself all day long, and in the end I realized that I no longer believed in life after death. Since then, I am not afraid of death and do not consider myself a Christian.

When I was 4 years old, my grandfather died. My mother told me about this and told me not to talk about this topic with my grandmother. The picture before my eyes is of me jumping rope in the middle of the room and joyfully telling my grandmother: “I know the secret, but I won’t tell you!” This meant grandfather's death. I absolutely didn’t realize what it was.

When I was three years old, I once asked my mother, they say, a person is born, grows, becomes an adult, then old - and then what? It seemed logical to me that then he would become small again - and in a new way. But mom said no. After old age everything ends. How does it end? I couldn't understand. Can tangerines in a vase run out, how can a person run out?

I encountered death for the first time at the age of five. My grandfather died. He was disabled, missing both legs, and rode around the apartment on such a small cart. He loved me very much, played all the endless children's games with me. At first they didn’t tell me that he died. I accidentally overheard a conversation between my grandmother and mother about the funeral. And it made me laugh at first. What kind of funeral? How did you die? For some reason it didn't fit in my head. She perceived the funeral calmly, with curiosity, as some kind of complex adult game. There were many relatives from all over the country, my grandfather’s brother promised to give me a squirrel... In general, I didn’t realize any loss then, my grandfather played like that in my perception.
It covered after a few months. I woke up at night with the distinct realization that everyone was dying. That this is final. With a face wet from tears. And she cried for several more nights. Not from fear, but rather from the inevitability realized for the first time.

The second time I cried like that was when we euthanized an old dog whose paws were lost. I was 16 then, and the awareness of the finitude of everything tormented me for a very long time; like a samurai, I thought about death every day.

I am a late child and by the time I was born all my grandparents had already died. Therefore, the first death I remember is the death of my mother’s brother. The classic is a late night phone call. His son came from America to visit him, and he was so happy that he died.

I was at a funeral for the first time and saw a dead person at the age of 23, they were burying my grandmother, she had some completely alien, unfamiliar face and a stupid scarf on her head, which she had never worn in her life, and everything was somehow crumpled and a little ridiculous . And in childhood - well, I just had this book knowledge that people die, well, that’s all.
Pet rats died, yes, their father took them somewhere and buried them, and after a while they got a new rat. One rat was very sick, a huge tumor grew on its side, no one would treat it, and in general, when everything was really bad with this unfortunate rat, I drowned it myself in a bucket, and then dried it with a hairdryer so that the parents would not ask unnecessary questions. I was probably 13 years old.

My feelings from my first encounter with death were far from socially acceptable. Namely, wild irritation and anger. When my grandfather was sick and dying (cancer), I was 6 years old. Now I understand that my grandfather was a good person and undoubtedly worthy of a good memory, but, to tell the truth, he paid very little attention to me, so I did not have any special affection for him. Maybe that’s why I was struck with terrible internal rejection by what seemed to me then and still seems to be a thoroughly false atmosphere of demonstrative grief with which my wife and daughters surrounded his departure. Permanently tear-stained voices, a tragic mask instead of a face, a folded mouth - where, from what films, did they get their ideas about what grief should look like? My only desire then was to turn away from them all and run away. Probably, this whole story greatly influenced me, because when my second childhood encounter with death happened, I behaved inappropriately. My desk neighbor, a cheerful, mischievous Georgian Zurik, the first-born and at that time the only child of young and very beautiful parents. Second grade, car accident, parents were seriously damaged, and the boy died. When the class teacher told us about this, I remember, I didn’t even listen to the end - I started spinning around, singing some nonsense, disturbing my classmates who were dumbfounded by the news - in general, doing everything so as not to try on the tragic falsehood that, as I then felt, seemed appropriate to the situation. I remember very well how the class teacher followed me with a heavy, unkind look, but how could she know what was going on.

When I was a child, my dad brought us a kitten. That day my parents had guests, and I was about 4 years old. I was jumping around the adults, and at some point the kitten got under my feet... They didn’t say anything to dad then, or rather, they said that he was crushed by the door when he wanted to go to the tray.

We lived in a private house then, and were very good friends with our neighbors. My parents were railway workers, and we were moved to a nice multi-storey building, and they stayed there. After some time, I found out that the neighbors’ daughter, with whom we were good friends, died: she was running around the garages and came across a bare wire. That time I went to a funeral for the first time...

I was always wildly afraid of the Nazis. Not the ones that are supposedly all over us now, but the ones that grandma talked about. I was terribly afraid of concentration camps, executions - everything, in a word, from my grandmother’s detailed stories. About hunger, about cold, about the enemy. This was probably such a general image of death. Since I was three years old, he has been stalking me.

I was very lucky - no one died in my early childhood. The goose flew to warm countries, the hamster ran away, and the fish were given to the neighbors. I lied to my daughter when she was little, that her kittens ran away, for which I raked her when she grew up. She, it turns out, was worried that no one loved her and didn’t want to live with her.

My great-grandfather died when I was 9 years old. They didn’t take me to the morgue or the cemetery; they somehow tried to make me know less. Mom told me something very sparingly and briefly. Grandfather was sick and died in his sleep, he just fell asleep and did not wake up (I called my great-grandfather and great-grandmother simply grandfather and grandmother). Then, gradually, over the course of six months, details began to leak out. That he moaned terribly before death, for example.

My great-grandmother died 6 years later, I was already 15. She quickly succumbed, she was overtaken by senile dementia (although before that she completely took care of herself and her grandfather), and lived with us, my mother and I were her round-the-clock nurses with all that it entailed (giving medications against will, feed with a spoon, wash several times a day). She died while I was in the country with my boyfriend during spring school break. Mom even managed to bury her during my absence (we went there for about a week). I called the day we were returning. It was very painful - I loved my great-grandmother much more than my great-grandfather, and while caring for her I became even more attached. I felt that my mother betrayed me a little at that moment, she didn’t tell me right away, she didn’t give me the opportunity to somehow say goodbye. I openly sobbed the whole time on the bus in which we were traveling to the train (probably an hour and a half). Sobbing out loud. She made a scandal at home. Because that's not possible. Well, you just can’t do that.

Text: Lilith Mazikina

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Many people have dreams about loved ones or relatives who have already left this world. In a dream, both of them talk about something and hug, just like in real life. Then, having awakened, the one who had such a dream remains in thought for a long time: what does this mean? Trying to see some kind of sign or omen in this. Is there a point to all this?

In February 2003, the sick Bishop Anthony of Sourozh dreamed of his grandmother and, flipping through the calendar, indicated the date: August 4. The Bishop, contrary to the optimism of the attending physician, said that this was the day of his death. Which came true.
Let’s give another story: “A friend of mine was killed at the age of 20. About a month or two after the funeral, I dreamed about him. It’s as if she’s standing under my balcony, waiting for me. I was surprised, since during my lifetime I communicated with him extremely rarely. And in a dream he began to complain to me that he was quickly forgotten, and no one came to his grave to remember him. He asked his girlfriend to come to his grave. I was so surprised because I didn’t know the girl at all. After such a dream, I went to church, constantly prayed for him, found his friend and told him what the deceased had asked for.”
Moscow Metropolitan Philaret, who died on November 19, 1867, two months before his death received an unusual notification from another world about his imminent departure to eternity. It was September 17th. The Bishop at that time was in the Trinity-Sergius Lavra. On the morning of September 18, the Metropolitan woke up and called Anthony, whom he respected and especially trusted. “Tonight,” Filaret told him, “my parents appeared to me and said: take care of the nineteenth.” After all, there are twelve nineteenths in every year. He took care of September 19, October 19 and November 19. On November 19, he died quietly.

The dream of the great Russian scientist Mikhail Lomonosov is also significant. On the way from Holland to Russia on a ship, Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov has a dream: his father, a fisherman, is sailing on a boat on the Arctic Sea, the wind has risen, the waves are roaring and are ready to swallow the swimmer; the son wants to rush to his aid, but his arms and legs are numb; The boat, hitting the shore of a nearby island, cried out: “Mikhail!” and disappeared, and then washed ashore. Upon arrival in St. Petersburg, not having peace in his soul with the persistent thought that his father lay unburied, Lomonosov found his fellow countrymen in the capital. He asked them what had become of his father; They replied that at the beginning of spring he and his comrades went to sea, but for four months nothing had been heard about them. Having no peace in his soul, Lomonosov himself wants to go to the island he saw in a dream, familiar to him from childhood, but did not receive leave from St. Petersburg. Then he begged the local fishermen to visit that island and, if they found his father’s body, give it an honest burial. The father's body was found and buried.
Another case. “Two friends died one after another in the winter, they were buried next to each other. Both widows met almost every day at the cemetery. And then one day, on Sunday night, one of them dreams of her husband and tells her that she must come to the cemetery early in the morning tomorrow. When she woke up, she was surprised and doubtful: she was going to go to church for the liturgy, as usual, at ten o’clock, and then suddenly it was early in the morning. But for some reason she wanted to fulfill the request she heard in her dream. She went to the cemetery and saw that something bad had happened: her friend’s grave had sunk half a meter - the sight was terrifying. Apparently, a lot of snow got into the ground with which the grave was covered: it rained at night, the snow melted, and the ground settled. If a friend’s widow, who was generally on the verge of a mental breakdown from grief, had come and seen this nightmare, the matter would have ended in a mental hospital. The woman quickly took the wreaths out of the hole, pulled old wreaths and bouquets from the trash heap, filled the hole with them, and covered the top with the deceased’s “own” wreaths. And as soon as she finished this work, the second widow appeared; they cried peacefully together and went their separate ways. What would have happened if she had neglected her late husband’s request?”
Nikanor, Archbishop of Kherson and Odessa, speaking in one of his teachings about the afterlife, states: “There could be many such facts that have the full meaning of reliability for persons who are completely venerable and deserving of faith... the facts are reliable, valid, possible, but we cannot say that we agree with the usual order of things established by the will of God.”

The book "Stories about the apparitions of the deceased to their relatives and friends."
Author of the book: Fomin A.V.

Ksu

And little Sonechka, who is only three years old, doesn’t believe that dad won’t come. He often looks at his photos, says that dad is very “good”, sometimes he wakes up at night and cries. Of course, I console her, although it hurts a lot. But the main one who helps her walk this path is her sister. She talks to her, tells her fairy tales, remembers her dad with her and always says: “Sonyushka, we will survive because we have a mother. And dad will always be there, we just don’t see him. After all, he loves us very much.” And you know, when I hear this, I wipe away my tears, step on my pain and just take care of the children.....

I took Daisy to classes with a psychologist, now I go to him myself. And they told me that I did everything right. Daisy was asked to draw a tree, she drew it dividing it into three parts: what was, is and will be. And do you know what my most important achievement is? That the child has a very beautiful light crown - a future with golden apples. She knows that she has a future, that her mother is nearby and that means all three of my father’s girls will be happy!!! And I’m trying very hard to make sure that the girls, my most beloved ones, and dad don’t forget, and move forward painlessly.

Lyalya

When my daughter died, I had to repeatedly answer my son’s questions WHERE DID MY SISTER GO. The daughter and son were inseparable, they ate together, went to bed together, played and walked together, they did everything together. Then my daughter died. Marina was 5.5 years old, and her son was 2.5 years old. How could one explain to a two-year-old child where his playmate was? I said that Marina flew to the star and now she will live there and go to kindergarten there. How did she fly away? She grew wings and became an angel. Why did Marina fly away? God called her, He really liked our Marina, so He called her. And now Marina lives next to Him and looks at us from her star, she knows everything about us, she sees and hears us. When will Marina return? Marina will not be able to return to us, because the star is very far away and she does not have enough strength to fly back. And so I answered his questions day after day. He understood everything. When he sees stars in the sky, he says - Marina is there. Already without sadness and indignation. Very calmly, he knows that she is nearby, she’s just not visible. It was difficult to bring him to the cemetery, even more difficult to explain why we were here. I said that here we planted flowers for Marina, Marina looks from her star and rejoices, and we need to come and water the flowers so that they grow and are beautiful. Then Marina will be very happy, because she loves flowers very much. And my son is happy to water them himself.

When the son grows up, he will understand everything himself. I think he won’t be angry with me for this fairy tale, because I believe in it myself. My daughter is alive, but very far away.

If my fairy tale helps someone, I will be only glad. The main thing is to surround a child experiencing the loss of a loved one with warmth and love.

Priest Georgy Belkind

Three years ago, after Christmas, Marinochka was buried. In general, 2014 was a kind of death year for us. Right after Easter, a very close friend of mine died, my mother died in the fall, my mother’s sister died in December, and then, Marina’s death.

I felt like some stupid student to whom the teacher is trying to explain something, but he just doesn’t get it, and I have to repeat, repeat...

We went to visit Marina on January 4th. Marina is my student, she suffered from type 1 diabetes, she is survived by her husband Sergei and a little daughter with cerebral palsy.

Seryozhka called her and said that she was in good condition. I took the gifts and we met on Kievsky, near the clock tower. It was exactly fifteen minutes past eleven.

They are allowed into the intensive care unit one at a time, but children are not allowed in at all, so they decided that I would go first, and he would stay with Manyasha, then we would switch. He explained that the doors to the intensive care unit were closed and he needed to ring the bell.

I approach the department, and suddenly the doors swing open, and there is such a bright glow behind them. A smiling cleaning lady comes out with her cart: “Who are you seeing?” - “To Marina Bogdanova.” - “And she died in the morning.” - “No, you were mistaken, you called her.” - “Well, maybe I got confused...” Half a minute later, a nurse appears: “How did you get here? Who are you going to?" I explain about the open door and that I am visiting Marina Bogdanova. - “Who are you to her?”

This is where everything started to fall apart... The nurse called the doctor, they didn’t tell me anything, they just asked: “Where is my husband?” We went down to the hall together. I called Seryozha, took Manyasha and stepped aside. They said something to him and left.

Then I remember everything, as if in delirium - Seryozha called Marina’s sister to give Manyasha to her, then there were a lot of people, then we were left alone and walked around the hospital like crazy - first taking turns to the morgue, then returning to the doctors... By the evening I felt a little better came. We sat in the hospital lobby and were silent. Marina's life is complete.

In the evening, a relative arrived in a car so that Seryozhka would not drive. They took me to Kyiv and left. I remember standing near the same tower, and the hands showed the same quarter of a new hour. Eight hours passed... It was as if the Lord took it from this place, showed death - as a message about life - and put it back.

Three years have passed, and I am beginning to understand a little this glow in the open doors of the intensive care unit. Marina was very strong. For her, being on the border between life and death was almost an everyday matter, because for a diabetic it is a matter of injecting a dose of insulin on time. And in such a state, which lasts for years, continuously, always, to get an education and a profession, to get married and give birth to a child...

After the funeral we went to the wake. I have never seen such joyful, not to mention funerals, such joyful gatherings in my life. About 40 people gathered and talked about her, like at a birthday party!

At some point, Seryozhka stood up to speak the funeral address. If someone from the street had come in at that moment and asked what was happening, and they would have told him that it was a husband who had just returned from his wife’s funeral in the cemetery, the person would have decided that he had ended up in a mental hospital.

And Seryozha said: “I have rarely felt her presence the way I feel her presence now.” And this was the universal truth.

Marinochka’s funeral service was performed by seven priests, by the way. How does a person have to live to have seven priests perform his funeral service?

Marinochka had bouquets of spray roses in her coffin. When we said goodbye, I broke off one bud. A year later, I gave this rose to Seryozhka—hello from my wife—and told him: “You need to get married, this is a word from her.” He answered me then: “I’m afraid to even think about it.” Recently I told him again about marriage: “It’s hard for Manyasha to carry you.”

Sergey and Manyasha

Yes, he is a responsible father, takes care of his daughter, treats and rehabilitates her, but in fact, Manyasha holds him and carries him through life. Manechka is a man of enormous power. If Seryozha marries, then life in this new family will be a great blessing and relief for Manyasha. And Marina will always be present in this new life.

Marina never said that she was afraid to die. Everything we talked about was always vital, cheerful, momentary, this-worldly, local, optimistic, trivial, life-affirming. Her awareness of mortality was a very deep secret - not even a single conversation. But this constant experience of the border between life and death gave her enormous spiritual experience.

Marina with her daughter

I think she didn't know about her hour of death. The Lord gives the hour of death for His faithful, for those who love Him, when their soul is most ready to enter Eternity. The hour of death does not become a meaningless end to existence. This is the meeting with Eternity that we want and ask for. If we understand it this way, then Marina passed into Eternity when she was completely ready.

Young driver, ease and error

The priest in a special way comes into contact with the experience of the mystery of death, since by the service itself he is introduced into someone else’s life at its very end. Death, of course, is a message - a message about a person's life, his last word, his last revelation. But as a permanent funeral parish priest, I can say that very often, unfortunately, too often the messages are empty - like an SMS without text. And this is a real religious disaster.

But it also happens differently. Here is one memorable incident we had in Venev. About seven or eight years ago they asked a young man, about 30 years old, a driver, who died in a car accident, to perform a funeral service at the cemetery.

The closed coffin was brought from the Kashira morgue. The funeral service was very easy: you often feel the state of mind of a person who has crossed the threshold of death. I didn’t know him at all, what kind of life he lived, whether he was truly a believer or nominally... But at the same time, the firm confidence that his soul was in some kind of bright lightness did not leave me.

When the funeral service was over, the relatives said: “Father, now we’ll have to open the coffin, my wife didn’t have time to say goodbye.” They opened it. I don’t know what kind of people worked in that morgue, but they applied such makeup...

In general, a sixty-year-old man was lying in a coffin. When everyone saw the deceased, a wave of numb horror ran through. The widow began to sag; four people held her.

And, you know, if I suddenly tried to start talking to them about his soul, to somehow console him, it would be stupid, of course. Unfortunately, for them, for the widowed woman, for all relatives, death will now always look the way they accidentally and mistakenly saw it. But the real message remained untransmitted.

After that we did not speak with the widow. For the most part, people don’t come then. For them, the ceremony is complete, and that's the end of it.

You know, periodically during confessions and in conversations after confession, wives (husbands usually leave earlier) ask: “Father, what should we do? My husband is dreaming." And who should he dream about if not his wife? To whom should his soul turn? But everything is covered with such superstition, such fear, such some kind of reluctance to accept this mortal message. It’s rare, rare when a person close to his deceased is ready to ask: “How do you like it? What are you doing there?

Father and audacious request for life

When I just started serving, my dad fell ill almost immediately, dry gangrene of his legs began, necrosis began, and a few months later he died. He died in March, and in February my family and I came to say goodbye. We had the only conversation about faith, I asked him: “Perhaps you should be baptized? I’m already a priest, I can baptize you.” He said: “Somehow I don’t know, I haven’t met God in my life. What will baptism mean now?

We didn't touch on this topic anymore. But all the months of my father’s illness, I not only asked, but directly knocked on Heaven and somehow boldly said to God: “I am now Your priest, hear me, give my father life.” When two years passed after my father’s death, I clearly realized that I had asked for torment for my father. If God had listened to me and the disease had not progressed so rapidly, it would have been torture.

Of course, as a human being, you want your loved one to always be there. Very rarely do people agree to accept the death of a loved one as a kind of message and begin to read it, begin to recognize it, begin to accept it.

But for the most part they experience emptiness, loss, and this continues even after a period of acute grief. But how can this be? The soul is alive, it does not disappear.

The patient swore at his mother and died

I will retell one story from the words of Father Andrei, with whom we serve together in Venev. One day an elderly woman came to him: “My son is in the hospital, give him communion.” The usual thing, the priest got ready and went, it turned out that the son was a grown man, a drunkard, it was clear that they were pumping out... He was baptized, but he obviously didn’t really care about the faith, the mother said that a priest was needed, apparently, he decided not to contradict.

Father Andrei began to read prayers. There was a radio on the window, turned on quite loudly. The priest asked to turn it off because it was disturbing. “Turn it off,” the mother turned to her son, and he responded with such obscenities... Father Andrei told me: “Such obscenities were addressed to the mother! And I have already prepared the Holy Gifts, I take a spoon to give him communion. And I think how, after all, this very minute before communion the man committed a mortal sin. What to do? Confess him again? Or not give him communion at all?

I was confused and mechanically, as they say automatically, I turned to give him communion, without even understanding how. And at that moment his tongue turned blue, fell out, he wheezed and collapsed. Died". You cannot say bad words to your mother - God sent such a message. In this sense, death is, of course, the last message, final and irrevocable.

But modern people find it difficult to understand all this.

Modern life is built on isolating death, repressing it, making a person generally incapable of experiencing death, and this is wrong, this is bad, this greatly impoverishes life. What exactly is liturgy? We must experience the death of Christ, stand before His cross, before His tomb, followed by the resurrection.

Lyuba and the Last Unction

In the first years of my ministry, I was called to give unction to a woman about 60 years old in a village not far from Venev. They said that she was our parishioner, but I didn’t find her as a parishioner: she had been ill for a long time. We met.

After the unction, Lyuba says: “Father, bless.” - "For what?" - “I want your blessing.” - "For what?" - “Do not take painkillers.” - "Why?" She said very firmly, quietly, calmly, you know what is called with authority when a person speaks, and you do not dare to object: “I want to suffer for Christ as long as I have the strength to endure.”

I went to unction her several times later. Then her daughter moved her to Moscow because she had become very bad, the pain was unbearable, and she was already being injected with painkillers. She and I became very friendly. Once again she came to administer unction, and it turned out that this was her last unction.

She was very fond of conciliar prayers; she seemed to rise up before our eyes, sit, and be invigorated. I remember at the fifth Gospel, at the fifth anointing, I suddenly asked her: “Lyuba, if God heals you, what will you do?” She joyfully replies: “I will praise Him!” And we had so much fun. She died a short time later. Such memories are what strengthens the heart, what we look for in saints, who give us assurance of eternal life, its presence.

Poet and friend - we talked about death cheerfully

In that year 2014, the first of the close people to leave was Evgeny Vladimirovich Turenko, a famous poet, creator of the Nizhny Tagil poetic school. Originally from Venev, he lived in the Urals, then returned and began to restore the Intercession Church.

In 2014, on Easter, for the first time on Bright Wednesday, I served the first liturgy in this church after restoration, on Bright Thursday I gave him communion at home - cancer, he could no longer go to church. On Fomino Sunday he reposed. Last year, his posthumous book was published, written by him in recent months. It's called "Hello, I am." There are very bold speeches there, for example, “Letters to the Apostles.”

LETTER TO THE HOLY APOSTLE PAUL

The archpriest says a vague sermon,
Like verbosity, imperious - to the dumb parishioners,
And intones, and has an artistic look
It depicts, and it doesn’t seem strange...
Sermons - give - help - bring...
I am not a walker, and, taking this sin upon myself,
I strive for God - from all the commonplace chatter,
I honestly walk and pray, but I don’t know the way...
Should I judge, and should I reason doubtfully?
Who am I - blind and almost a holy fool - that’s who...
Write letters and wait for mercy without memory,
Poke holes in empty frosty windows with your gaze?
Listen to the verses, both blood and tears, Pavel!
With God’s will, cry out to the evil one: “Get lost!”
I have already convinced and corrected many,
Do not abandon the Apostolic Church. Amen!

He and I talked about death, about possible departure, a lot and fun. He has a wonderful line in one of his poems:

If you are on first name terms with me,
I'll be me for you.

I tell him: “Zhenya, come on, when you die, we will emboss this line for you on the monument, and I will bring you a wreath and write on the ribbon: “I was with him on a first name basis, and he was me!”” I’m always with him. it was fun talking about death.

When I gave him communion on Bright Thursday (as it turned out, three days before his death) and joked something about the fact that he had to crawl into the church yesterday, oh, how he fervently snapped in response... But it was already like... that's what it says from there. The soul strengthens itself, doing the mortal work of affirming life. Remember Pasternak’s:

Death can be overcome
Let's make Sunday stronger.

This is an unobservable mystery, but sometimes the Lord lifts the veil...

The heroine of the very first story, Marina, has a daughter with cerebral palsy. To her .