Terminally ill father was forced to leave the daughter in an orphanage. They were separated by 700 kilometers. But he couldn’t miss her birthday. How much is your last request? In the Moscow hospice know – it is priceless. Barriers to appointments and love does not exist. The main thing – to have time!
Leroy and Eugene
- Nut Federmesser: About worthy and unworthy death
- Nut Federmesser: the Hospice is the house of life, and nothing else
- “If not for this hospice, I would be dead.”
- Nut Federmesser: For life, for life
- Roofing is still in shock – to a wedding in the hospice came Sobyanin
How much is the last wish
– Where do you suggest her to go? Yes, about father’s mean. As hospice?! They die, and you’re… a girl… in General… is the male voice on the phone, stunned silent. Then the orphanage Director took himself in hand and the link again:
I understand, very sorry, but for girls it would be stressful. Yes, I understand that perhaps the last meeting. But in hospice! Talk to a psychologist. I do not know. Can’t promise anything. Well, if the Department of education will allow, then…
Lera
Tanya Lobanova, coordinator of the Foundation “Vera” hospice “Nekrasovka”, put the phone down with a heavy feeling. Everyone with whom she said wanted her only for good. Sincerely. But the hospice in their understanding was not for teenage girls with good. And not all makers were ready to release the child from a small Chuvash city Kanash to Moscow. Tanya understood, not condemned and not even much fell apart when the Ministry of education of Chuvash Republic finally refused the Leroy on the trip.
But I had to act. Lera and her terminally ill dad marry still were more than 700 kilometers. Until September 1, the day of the birth of a daughter, was a week. Zhenya came to the Moscow hospice, leaning heavily on his stick, staring off into the distance and was silent. Valerie knew nothing about the surprise. She was just dreaming that daddy will get well and get home for good, more because she has no one. Tanya, the coordinator of “Nekrasovka”, tore off the phones, trying to connect the native people. She knew only too well that “tomorrow” and “next year” may not be.
“How much is your last request? – wrote in his Facebook the founder of the Foundation “Faith” Nut Federmesser. – Zhenya, which we now have in the hospice and who is only 38 years, the last wish is worth 70 thousand rubles. Zhenya is still time ahead, there is much to catch…”
70 thousand rubles – for gas, hotel, cafe, cakes, flowers and a huge bear as a gift. The decision was made – if the ler is impossible, is possible Wife. Yes, because of the tumor in the sacrum he can’t sit. Yes, he had surgery and it twice a day an injection of morphine. Yes, he wants to daughter. To take her to school and hand over the bear. Kiss. To fix my hair. To say: “Learn well, my dear, I’ll call”. Yes, 700 kilometers in this case – not the distance. And 70 thousand – not the amount.
Eugene
“Let it happen!” under post of Nity multiplied comments from people, translating money, and in Nekrasovka broke the phone, someone crying, and someone suggested a helicopter. On the morning of 31 August, Eugene was put in the van, sat down next to the doctor with the morphine, volunteer Light took out the camera, the driver turned BI-2 and Chicherin: “My rock-n-roll.”
Now they remember that sang and laughed the whole way. Jack joked, the doctor held the syringe ready, the driver drove away the dogs in the Parking lot, Light pressed the record button, Jack waved a hand: “No sad frames”, all together eating hot dogs, and then in Cheboksary looking for 8 cakes for classmates to Read. Found.
It was their day, dads and daughters. Unknown, did they understand until the end that this might their last meeting. They were just together. “Dad, smile like you were smiling!” In the orphanage, in school, on the boat, in the mirror maze, the restaurant, the whole day together. For 13-year-old she would say later: “It was my best birthday ever!”, and in the evening going to call the Wife, sobbing: “don’t go!” Early in the morning she will leave for the fence of the orphanage to conduct the Pope to Moscow, concealing the face, but everyone will see that it is swollen from tears.
What is all this cancer?
– Valerie, I will recover – immediately you will be taken.
– And you at any time?
– Of course. Just as I am now, if in hospitals all the time? Not yet.
Two years ago Valerie and Jack walked slowly along the fence and wished it would never end. But the daughter was waiting for a gate for which the orphanage and other life, and the Pope – another hospital in Cheboksary or Moscow, as lucky. Ill with cancer the Wife has failed to find someone who will look after the daughter. Mother drunk deprived of the rights of relatives no. Then Valerie asked, “And if you do not get well?”, and, it seems, still that thought settled in her head seriously.
“What is all this cancer? – Jack reclines on the couch in the hospice Nekrasovka and drinking tea, to sit he can’t. – I understand the flu, headaches, everything. And cancer can not. Can’t understand it.”
The diagnosis of “chondrosarcoma of the lower section of the sacrum,” his Wife put in a year after he fell. Came to help at the construction site to a friend, went into the house and immediately flew to the cellar, someone has left open the hatch. Somehow got out and then went to work as a bricklayer, but a year later things got worse.
Therapist, neurologist, proctologist in Cheboksary, where Jack traveled over 100 kilometers from your Kanash – all spread his hands: you do not to us. “To whom?” – asked already bad soobrazhenij pain Eugene. The question hung in the air. In the end, someone from the surgeons performed a biopsy of the bone. Well, everything. Cancer. Chondrosarcoma. Jack got into the Internet. The lifespan of 5-7 years. He decided to go to Moscow:
“The first time Juliet lived, a classmate of mine. Us in onkotsentre on Kashirke said call once a week on Thursday in this room, on Thursdays attended and discharged. A month has passed, the second went, I call, not put. I spat, gathered her things and went to Canas. Juliet, without thinking, on Friday morning went to the hospital directly to a physician. Sat there till five in the evening, not yet tried. Not take it, even the guards called. She shouted: “Not eligible!” In General, the doctor took it, said I Monday came. And when we came, all the doctors already knew: it’s carp, and it is Juliette, the ones that are made a high.”
My wife had a surgery, cut a part of the sacrum, coccyx and two vertebrae. Says that, while lying, the doctors rarely came. More specifically, the bypass was, but the doctors talked among themselves. But the cleaning lady offer to watch TV came every day. 50 RUB per patient – and in the house for a day appeared a no, but a window to the world. For leaving also had to pay. According to Genis – 3000 roubles the nurse.
– The nurses, the cleaners – all of your business. The nurse comes in, “do You need help? Going in the morning to make a shot and feed in the afternoon and an injection feed and in the evening. But at 8 PM to 3000 lay on the table”. I collected documents that I am a single dad, and to the Secretary. Want, they say, documents to provide. What? I don’t have enough money to pay the nurses, that they care for me did. Everything is clear, all is well, all will be. And looked out for me for free.”
Some time after the operation, Jack lived in a house in Kanash and even took my daughter to the weekend.
Lera
Every Sunday, infinitely slowly pulling the sneakers Lera asked, “Dad, could not go to the orphanage?” At this point my Wife always did not have enough air to reply.
In the end, he gathered the forces and once again explained about hospitals, about treatment, about cancer, and he saw two attentive children’s eyes: “Okay, dad, I’m not going to cry. But maybe not go back?” Periodically Jack was in palliative care Department of Oncology center in Cheboksary. He was getting worse, the tumor grew, he again bought a train ticket to Moscow.
– Arrived in Madina, I ask: let’s see what I have there. Sent to oncologist’s recommendation, she wrote that chemistry is not necessary. I have this piece of paper to the doctor. He said, “you Can go home.” I said, “Well let’s see what I have growing.” “No, I will not even look.” “What, I just wait for death?” “Yes, – he says. – That’s all.”
Eugene to wait passively did not. Moreover, it was very painful. He called the very Light, which will later go with him to Kanash and will shoot with their daughter meeting. Light wrote on Facebook. So Jack was in hospice, “topics”.
The dead will leave in the middle of the corridor and go
Jack woke up this morning and saw the sandwich. The Breakfast was fantastically beautiful: bread, butter, salmon, caviar separately. Jack closed his eyes and reopened. The sandwich disappeared. Jack reached for the phone:
– I spawn in a sandwich spread, took a picture and let everyone you know to send Chuvash Republic: see what we have for Breakfast. Nobody believes.
It was the strongest impression of the Moscow hospice. Once it became clear that here you can go where you want. Jack wondered for a long time, and now used: when you can’t sleep, he goes to the balcony or walks in the garden. Night. And no one stops. And palliative care the Department of Cheboksary Eugene was caught by a loud cry of staff, as soon as he set foot in the corridor: “Karpov, to stand where he was going!” In the toilet of an adult male has had to take time off as other patients. Crawl to the post, to announce his desire to crawl to the toilet, then back to the post to report and then to the house.
Territory hospice
But the worst thing was not it, – Zhenya already cringe when he remembers. – Right when we took out the dead people in the hallway. Not covered, nothing. Sometimes techs will call somewhere, they’ll drop dead in the middle of the hallway and go right guard.
As much attention as in the Moscow hospice, Eugene did not receive, I think, in my entire life. Once he tried to lie on the bed, but my leg would not obey, in less than five minutes in the corridor there came a stamping of feet. Jack remembers it and laughs:
– There are cameras everywhere, to see me squirm, just 6 people ran, raised, ask: can you move something? No, they don’t move me and, most importantly, the ass is not hurt, and that hurt. I myself did not, as already in bed, and they are running around maybe something else?
Tanya, the coordinator of the Foundation “Vera” hospice “Nekrasovka” to confirm that all try to treat my Wife very carefully: “He’s the youngest here. He had no time to get bored: it’s a picnic, a concert, just the volunteers are coming.”
In the theater
In hospice, Jack was so alive, that your going to… theatre. Volunteer, and now comrade and a true friend of Light helped him in this. In the Malaya Bronnaya theatre they came through the back entrance with a mattress under his arm. In a specially allotted him the bed Jack lay like a king. The play he “understood not”, but all in all he liked:
– Two couples came to the resort, and then one girl thought that life could be different. She took a few SIPS of champagne, and everything turned upside down. In General, all these people are sort of swapped roles for a while. This husband went to one and wife to it. In short, it’s about what would happen if they met the opposite. In the end it is still all unhappy.
Before that, 38-year-old Zhenya in the theatre was never. More precisely, once. Together with other children from the orphanage took him to see “the Golden key”. He never lived in the family. The orphanage, orphanage, orphanage in his biography there is no home address. Some of the legal.
Jack in the theater
Iron bed, table and two stools
The blind mother was giving birth to Eugene hard. It was surrounded by the same unseeing, as she said, the family lived in the house for the blind. Tried to help, to touch something to do with the umbilical cord. Strong frost, the roads are covered with snow, the ambulance was traveling 4 hours. When doctors arrived to do anything has been impossible: the woman lost too much blood.
She is survived by her four children: two sisters-high school girls and two little boys, one of whom is a newborn Jack. The father, a blind disabled person, I realized that all does not pull. The boys went to the baby house. Different. Jack will track down brother many years later, as an adult, and make sure brother, just as he does not blame the father.
Sisters of a common language, he did not find. They’ll take it a few times on vacation, the father he sees once or twice and won’t even remember. When the father dies, the Wife about it no one will say. And my sister will slam in his face the door: “You did not even come to the funeral!” He was not able to explain that he did not know about his father’s death.
About his life in the orphanage, Jack says quietly, casually. We still sit on the ground floor of the hospice, in front of us cold tea, outside the window, dark, someone turned Malakhova, Zhenya voice sounds on top of the TV exactly, even with detachment somehow, and this is even worse.
“In the orphanage, if dinner is not eaten, night forced to sit over the plate. Waited, when all will eat. I sat up all night. Was hoping that in the morning a new mess will. In the morning the teachers came: and, you have not eaten? And waste in the mess, flop on you!”
Photo: ilimas.ru
Eugene consistently recalls how for two children fell gate and one head was smashed, as on the holiday one drowned boy, as the teacher dropped the child on the asphalt, he survived, but he had a concussion. Because of the guilt she drove the boy to his home.
“We were so jealous! He watches TV as he wants, sweet eats! While in boarding school I ran away. In 6-7 grade. I’m tired of this. In doorways to sleep at all uncomfortable. Lie on the pipe and think: now boarding would have dinner and to bed. Two days will be free, cooks buns, breads, that sort of thing and come back.”
The hole in the boarding school was arranged in the former “munitions”, have been used to store machines for lessons. Most unruly teenagers could spend a week there. The room two for three, the bed, the dim light, grille, metal door to the restroom, you have to Bang it with a fist it hard and yelling. Maybe open.
Jack is still convinced that the boarding school teaches great life. I don’t believe, ask to repeat, to explain. He turns to me and looks straight into his eyes: “we Need to work to everything in this life to overcome and to achieve something”. I snort in response, a boarding school that teaches only pain and cruelty, but even cut off from people feeling the pieces. Eugene continued, ignoring me:
And then we at the school went on the master-builders. Decided to stay together. In our company and the mother of Valeria was in boarding school she 1 studied, and I 1-B. At the end of the third year were married. The Director gave us a room in a hostel, gave the iron bed, table and two stools. I got a job as a bricklayer, started to live.
Eugene began to work in shifts: a month at home, month to North construction sites. And the wife started to drink. For some time he forgave her everything, and then divorced. Leroy was born four years after the divorce: ex-wife had nowhere to live, and somehow it just happened.
Then it got worse and worse: marrying the watch, the wife of Leroy neighbors in the Dorm. The girl had a little brother, the woman gave birth to him from another man. Eugene lived separately and many months sought by the administration of deprivation of the parental rights of the mother.
Once I stopped there, went to the neighbors, they say, she is the third day does not appear here, we hear what’s inside children. I’m in the administration, they gathered in “Gazelle” 7 people. Got to the room, there are dishes lying around, all nibbled and licked clean, they didn’t eat. In a small hospital, came to the shelter.
Eugene took the controller from the shelter, transferred to another school, preparing her Breakfast, lunch, checked lessons, walked, did everything that she had another life. He didn’t want boarding school, who “taught his life,” somehow broke and the fate of his daughter. Even a hostel they always went out for a walk. But the disease did not ask Eugene about the plans, the orphanage was still part of Irineu life.
Not think that need to die
– You promised not to cry.
– Well, not anymore. All right, all right.
Leroy calls his Wife to a hospice for 5-6 times a day. He bends his fingers: at recess, then after school, after NAP time, 6pm, and 9. Cries less, dad was taught to stick.
– In Saransk called on the volley. She called: dad, I don’t know how. I say: go ahead, the main thing – participation. It is important that she learned not to lie, listening to adults. Delved what they say. And then in one ear flies, out the other.
When Jack was walking with my daughter, and it always showed which houses were built, where a pattern bricks laid. She admired: “You, dad, probably, the whole of Kanash built!” Shortly before his illness Jack started to get 50,000 in a month. They are Leroy began to save money, wanted to go to the Black sea. If cancer was to happen, he could wait one summer. But no, for some reason he was in a hurry.
Canas. Photo: Alexey Zabolotnov /z-alexey.ru
– I used to think that everything is already. In one dream I fell, in another, I can not Wake up. Then the dead dream. Coffins every day. I woke up and again the same dream came. Very hard.
Every time we thought that was it, the end. I and the light ceased to turn off the TV. With everything included was sleeping, the door stopped closing, and the keys no one else. With the door open slept. And in hospice, there is nothing. Even in a head does not come that soon will have to die.
My wife is now 38, he’s confident he’ll live to be 60. He knows chondrosarcoma gives him a maximum of 8 years, of which two years have already passed. He is ready to write on daughter will. Laughing, he did not know who he will be booked in the coffin of patent leather shoes as Michael Jackson. And at the same time, somewhere here is the certainty: to live still a long time.
In this atmosphere not think that it is necessary to die. I would like a family, of course. I do not want to go home. Because there is nobody waiting for me. My daughter, of course, Yes. And so – empty room, four walls. Behind the door are drug addicts and alcoholics. About the meaning of life can not say anything. Live to live. And love in order to love.
With Leroy
*** The coordinators of the Foundation “Faith” is accompanied by volunteers and do our best to make each patient something special. The coordinators take care of all non-medical tasks – to provide comprehensive support to each patient and his family. They help to create in hospices life – concerts and invite the dogs-therapists. Different needs: someone wants a delicious Breakfast or dinner, someone important to meet with a priest or psychologist, to reconcile with loved ones, to travel, which he dreamed. And someone like my Wife, to meet with the loved one.
Support the work of the coordinators of the hospice charity Fund “Vera” so they could have time to make large and small dreams of patients today. Because tomorrow may be too late.
Go to the page collection at the Foundation’s website
Photos and videos Svetlana Ibatullina