There’s an idea in the Eastern philosophy that pure kindness doesn’t exist in human beings. As we are all split, neither our feelings nor our actions are whole. So, if we love someone, at the same time we hate him or her. Our love encompasses hatred.

My Grand-grandpa spent the last years of his life at home, since he had lost the eyesight as a result of brain hemorrhage. Whenever we went to the village, the first thing I would do was to run upstairs and rush into his room. The room had lemon-colored walls, one of which was full of books from the floor to the sealing. My Grandpa would touch me gently to “see” how much I had grown up. Then we talked. I was four, he was in his nineties. Although I could barely hear his voice that the years have made weak, I would listen to him attentively, with a great curiosity. Grandpa was an intelligent man, he had been the member of the local government. He had read a lot, he knew a lot. Moreover, he would never talk to me as to a child, rather as to his peer. I was grateful to him for this attitude.

Once I told him something that I regret telling till now: “Isn’t it a shame that you are in this condition?” It meant that he, having been respected and smart man, was now ill, old, and vulnerable. I didn’t realize what I said, though. I just repeated what I had heard from others:  “What a pity! He was such a great man. Now, look, what has happened to him!” People would say it shaking their heads as if they were sorry for Grandpa. On the other hand, you could hear the tone of a blame in their speech, as though it was Grandpa’s fault that he was old and ill, as though he was guilty of being in the state he was.

So, I said what I said and I instantly saw how Grandpa’s eyes became full of tears and then how two tiny drops went down his thin and wrinkled cheeks. He silently lowered his head. I don’t remember what I said or did then or whether I said or did anything.

Grandpa passed away when he was 94. I was six at that time. I cried at his funeral – I had lost the closest friend I had ever had.

Grandpa left one of his photographs to me. The photograph has a writing on it: “To little Nana. Please give this picture as a memory about me to your first child.” The curious thing is that the writing uses the formal “you” (as “Вы” in Russian or “Sie” in German). Sometimes I think that even if I didn’t want to have children, I would still have one just to give him or her Grandpa’s photograph.