Trafika Europe 7 - Ukrainian Prayer

Tanya Maliarchuk

about life on the other side, about paradise and hell, about the soul, but back then I used to love talking about such things. And grandmother suddenly said: “I don’t believe in the soul! I don’t believe in anything. A person dies and their bones decay and that’s it. Period. The end. There’s nothing more.” “Grandma,” I said to her. “it’s really terrifying to think that way. Aren’t you terrified you’ll die, and your bones will decay, and that’s it?” “What’s there to be afraid of? That’s the way it should be.” “Then why live at all then, if afterward there’s nothing?” “How is that nothing?! Look, you are! You’ll remember my life, I’ve told you everything.

That’s immortality.” I came to realize then that I needed to run away. I stopped tearing off the bean pods and ran away. I ran away from my grandmother and from her life to mine. Because I don’t want to be her immortality! I want to have my own! It’s not fair like that! I also have a right to my own life and to my own immortality! I don’t want to be a victim of her lack of faith! That’s what I thought when I ran away. I’m thirty years old now. My grandmother died a long time ago. I didn’t even go to her funeral. But I wasn’t able to save myself anyway. For sure, I escaped too late. I don’t have my own stories – just hers. And I tell other people her stories. Against my will. Unintentionally. Something sits inside me that constantly spurs me

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