I never saw my grandfather again after those long evenings spent in America with him, listening to his stories. After he went back to Ukraine, a stroke rendered him mute. He died soon after and I was not able to attend the funeral. I feel the weight of not being able to say goodbye, even as I carry his stories inside me, and I will feel it for the rest of my life. Some wounds are not meant to heal.
Pavlichenko’s wounds never fully healed either. She died when she was just 58, cradled in her son’s arms. The USSR had no decent palliative care programs or end-of-life care for its veterans, let alone anyone, and her death was a painful one. According to Pavlichenko’s daughter-in-law, Lyubov Davydovna, she swore like a sailor before she said goodbye to her son and passed away. There is something fundamentally tragic about an ending like that — and yet it is also bittersweet, and fitting, that this woman who did not care what anybody thought of her would leave the world just like this.
I feel like “alone under a bridge” or maybe “alone in a nursing home” might be a worse way to go. But who knows?
Here, Read This 