Grieving together: Sasha's Grave at Rakitki Cemetery and Kut'ya at Boris Davydovich's Wake

It's September 30. Outlined in black on my calendar. It's 3 years since
Sasha's death and by eery coincidence the 40th day since Boris Davydovich,
my dear old friend, died. He would have been 80 yesterday.
Sasha's sister, mother, and niece come for me in mid morning, to my bus stop
and away we go into the smog and the series of traffic jams. (Moscow is choking
on it's own success -- and the failure of the government to invest in infastructure
and build highways in and around the city. People keep buying cars and
using them, complaining even as they spend hours in traffic jams.) They are my hosts, the mother giving me her apartment and going to live with the daughter
while I'm here. I'm a tie to Sasha. In 2005 I was his friend, mentor and encouraged
him to come to the US, where he desperately-desperately want to go. I arranged
an invitation at UNM and all was set when, one night in late September that same year,
something happened. We still don't know what. He lived alone, had his cell
phone stolen a few days before, girl friend had quarreled and didn't come,
and apparently injured badly, he must have tripped over his city telephone
cord and broke it. We assume he was beaten up on the street, in a random
mugging. It happens in this normally safest of places in daytime. Neighbors refused to let him in to use the phone, they were convinced he was drunk (he was not a drinker) because a brain concussion has similar symptoms. The family found him after five days, and rushed him
to a hospital, but there, too, they were sure he was drunk and let him
lie on a cot for a couple of days until it was too late to save him.
He died at the end of that week, age 38.
We drive to the cemetery, and I try to make cheerful small talk. We feel
close. Finally, we're there - at this sea of small burial plots, almost all
surrounded by a small fence, crosses of all kind, mainly marble with pictures
of the departed. Some have gone extravagant and built glass enclosed masoleums
with ivy growing up the walls. Most keep to the traditional -- a bench to
sit on beside the grave and remember the person, a small table for putting out
the person's favorite food, or some kind of small gesture to the afterlife.
As is to say: there take that and enjoy it, enjoy it with us.
We buy flowers, put them on the grave and stand together in a long silence,
thinking of Sasha, as if communicating with him. The mother says: He's happy
to see us coming to visit him today, all of us together. Then we leave,
make our way through the vast low plain of plots, graves, some fresh, others
neglected but mainly not, a plain strewn with flowers plastic and natural that stretches out as far as the eye can see. It's just one of the several municipal cemeteries. A funeral is underway at
the small church by the gates as we leave. It's not muddy, it's a grey but
warmly damp day.
They drop me off at the metro. The next event is Boris Davydovich's wake
(Russian: pominka). According to Orthodox belief, the soul--after flailing
around and about--goes to Heaven on the 40th day. It's a time for remembering and
celebrating the rising of the spirit of the beloved one. The wake is held in
B.D.'s (Borya to all, but the short name is not to be used on such a formal
occasion.) own modest, drab, but (dearly familiar to me) apartment. He and
his late wife Ol'ga got this separate one room apartment during the Gorbachev period
after always living in a communal ones. They were modest people, except
in their loyalty to friends, their independence of mind, their courage (to
befriend foreigners, even Americans - then Enemy #1), living encyclopedias
with a gift for laughter and moral discourse, especially literary.
Moscow is no longer the same without them. But I'm happy to be here on
this special day.
Galina, his daughter meets me at the door. We had never met, but we
knew all about each other. She is a deacon in the Church, her husband
also important in the Patriarchy. There daughter is here from Denver,
where she lives now with her Russian husband and their 5 little children.
She's come to finish her degree here and brought her twins with her.
I am the first to arrive, Galina is still cooking for the dinner, but
the table -- two tables put together to make one long one, set with
tall white napkins folded to stick up high like candles on a bright white table
setting makes striking contrast with the dim, grimy walls. There is a
balcony and the door is open to an expanse of trees, changing colors now,
brilliant in the late afternoon sun. I think: B.D. would like this.
Galina tells me about her church, their old communal apartment, everything
in the world while she peels potatoes. It's nice to have this private
visit. Then the other guests start trickling in -- B.D.'s first wife,
a microbiologist, his son's wife( the son himself
is on a business trip to Spain), and their 20-something old daughter and little son,
old friends, a young friend that BD met in a park and became a fast
friend with for 10 years (he was, among other profiles, a naturalist, as
the young man is). The meal starts with a prayer sung by Galina.
Then we eat bliny with kut'ya -- the traditional rice with raisins,
a sweet and sticky dish that is thought to hold a person together on a day of
mourning, when he might come apart, and to remind us of the sweetness of the afterlike.
Toasts to his memory come (no clinking of glasses on such a day),
chats, gossip, bits of wisdom, memories. Eventually, the conversation
even turns to cats -- and their genius. BD's first wife tells that
many neighbors at the dacha bring their cats there, leave them there
all winter, only bring them back in the fall. Now, and by the way,
she's bored there now -- there are no mushrooms, nothing to do.
She is a city woman, an academic, but with practical garden marked hands.
One guest tells about the remarkable cat who belonged to a friend.
On the day the friend died, the cat jumped to its death from the 9th floor -
a certain suicide. The cat just didn't want to live any longer. We all
agree, cats are marvelous, intelligent creatures. There is some talk of dogs, too.
I'm the first to leave, it's late and I have to travel by metro and bus
to the other side of the city. From the courtyard I look back up at the
balcony, the house where I came so many times, and feel sad to think
that I will not be coming here any more. I buy a bottle of wine to take
home, my neighborhood store will be closed and I feel like drinking a
little. It's been a long day.