is a heartbreaking yet darkly humorous memoir about a daughter who immigrated to Canada to separate from her parents – only to rush back to Moscow when her father’s cancer demands a desperate rescue: her bone marrow. Trapped in the sterile limbo of hospital days, she reminisces about his role in her life, clinging to their bittersweet jokes and conversations while carrying a secret too heavy to confess. With unflinching honesty, the book chronicles the chaos of a terminal diagnosis, the exhausting battle with mental health issues, and the scars of immigration. This healing story offers solace and solidarity for those who’ve lost loved ones to cancer, faced immigration struggles and battled mental health in silence.
12.04.2025
A movie about Dad through his music is made —Simon & Garfunkel to Piazzolla, Vertinsky to Zaz. His soundtrack echoes across generations. The daughter reminisces about the music they loved – songs that shaped her taste and funny stories about mispronounced lyrics and kindergarten runaways.
The village church overflows with mourners as the narrator confronts the crushing weight of her father’s absence. This is his legacy: a life spent collecting both rare treasures and fractured souls, now reduced to silent artifacts and unanswered questions. What is now left? His cluttered office, his unfinished plans, and her mother’s clenched fists in an echoing, empty house.
They tiptoe around the word ‘coma,’ draping it in euphemisms. They say: ‘He’s sleeping’ – shared incantation against the unbearable. A mother moves into a small room near the ICU. Her world shrinks to hospital halls and the sound of church bells. Fall turns to winter unnoticed. We know – dad may never wake. Faith remains.
She lingers in grief’s bargaining stage, refusing to believe her father is truly gone. A desperate self-deception: her mind pretending this is just another game of hide-and-seek, that any moment now he’ll reappear with a laugh and open arms.
Dad is playing Hide and Seek Read Post »
Rushing from Canada to Moscow to visit Dad in intensive care — unrecognizable after just a month. Hiding shock behind forced stupid jokes. The storyteller in a spacesuit trying to trick death. Collapsing into a stranger’s arms. The sterile air, skeletal hand, Mom’s silent vigil—none of it feels real. Only the guilt remains: fear of the body that used to be so alive.
A stopover in Istanbul, a walk along cobblestone streets, Turkish cats – heirs of great Constantinople, Dad’s guidance, Turkish coffee causing a terrible headache, humiliation of women, the injustice of the whole world — and it all ended at the police station.
Istanbul, Police Station and cobble streets Read Post »