Forgotten Memories: The Heart of a Village Home

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We bought a house in the village from a young couple who said their parents no longer needed a dacha, and their grandmother had passed away a year ago. After her death, no one visited the house except to sell it. When we asked if they wanted to take any belongings, they shrugged and said, “Why would we need this trash? We took the icons. You can throw away the rest.”

But why didn’t they take the photos?

Men, women, and children looked down from the walls of the village hut. In the past, people adorned their walls with photographs. I remember visiting my grandmother and seeing new photos of my sister and me framed on her walls.

“I wake up in the morning,” my grandmother used to say, “bow to my parents, kiss my husband, smile at the children, and wink at you—then my day begins.”

After she passed away, we added her photo to the wall. Now, whenever we visit the village, which we now call our dacha, we always send a kiss to her in the morning.

We never knew my grandfather; he died in the war. His photo hangs in the center. My grandmother told us so much about him that it felt like he was with us, even though it was strange seeing him young while she was old.

For me, these faded pictures are invaluable. If I had to choose one thing to take, it would undoubtedly be the photos. Yet here they were, left behind, labeled as trash.

As we began to clean, I couldn’t bring myself to throw away the belongings of the woman who had lived for her children and grandchildren, only to be abandoned by them.

How do I know this? She wrote letters to them. At first, she sent them without reply. Then she stopped sending them, and three neat stacks of love and tenderness rested in her dresser. I confess, we read them.

I understood why she stopped sending them—she feared they’d be lost. She thought that after her death, they would be read. The letters told a story of her life during the war, about her parents and ancestors, retelling what her grandmother had told her to keep family values alive.

“Shall we take these to her children?” I tearfully asked my husband.

“Do you think they’re any better than the grandchildren?” he replied doubtfully. “Maybe they’re old or sick.”

“I’ll call them and ask.”

Through the grandchildren, we got a phone number and heard a cheerful female voice: “She sent us those letters in packs. We haven’t even read them lately!”

My husband didn’t listen to the end; he hung up.

“You’re a writer. Translate these letters into stories!” he urged. “They’ll appreciate it later.”

“Yes, I’m sure they don’t read such books!” my husband chuckled. But he went and notarized everything anyway. Meanwhile, I went down to the cellar. In village houses, you go straight from the hut to the underground, where it’s cool like a cellar. Each jar had a faded label: “Vanyatka’s favorite milk mushrooms.” Vanyatka died ten years ago, never tasting them; “Chanterelles for Sonechka”; “Pickles for Anatoly”; “Forest raspberries for Sashenka.”

Anna Lukyanovna passed away at 93. She had six children. Yet none except the youngest daughter, who didn’t need all this “rubbish,” were there for her. For years, she waited for her children to visit, but they never did.

You can’t force someone to love you. But you can instill human values in your children and grandchildren, so they don’t grow up insensitive and rigid. Much depends on parents. Loneliness in old age results from misplaced priorities. Many parents, both fifty years ago and now, believe that children need material goods. But what they need most is attention.