Makalevychi / Макалевичі

In memoriam my grandmother.

As my grandmother Kateryna passed in February 2014, the last of my grandparents, I finally had felt that the time is passing. I had felt myself old and it was the first time when I realized that I want to have children to cover that emptiness. To bring the control over the time back to my hands. I had felt that I had lost connection with special world, the world of my grandmother. This is the world of rural life. My grandmother had lived at the village Makalevychi almost for the whole life. She had a cow, chicken, pigs and big garden. In her country yard there was a well, hidden in the bush of viburnum. As I had been told by my parents, a monster lived there. I spent a part of childhood at the village, in her house. I saw, how she milked a cow, how my grandfather hacked the head of rooster (my grandmother never did it). I remember ritual gathering of the family when a pig was butchered. I was never strong enough to see that but I remember the scream of a pig. It was important event – the bird of an animal needed to be correctly carved, offal processed. The meat was divided between family members. For the last years of her life my grandmother lived with my parents. It was difficult for her to adapt to urban life. She took care about plants in the apartment, to grow anything alive. She lived with a dream to go back to village and plant vegetables. To plant vegetables and look after animals, another reality. It was her way of life, quite peaceful and harmonious. Her death it was a breakdown. The ties with that place and the part of my childhood were broken.