“My name is Brusilov, Andrei Ivanovich. I was born in 1969 and died in 2010. I have lived in the world forty-one years and two months. Or rather, I lived eight months and lived in my body for thirty-nine and a half years, until the day I knew I had cancer. Now I’m dead, and I’ve decided to warn those who will read this so that they won’t live most of their lives as meaninglessly as I did.
I was born back in 1969. Ros, lived like everyone else. This is a terrible phrase, which, as a rule, denotes life without meaning. I was no better or worse than anyone I knew. He served in the army, graduated from a construction university, married, in the nineties began to engage in business. I dreamed of my home. I knew how to design and I knew how to do it. First, I started a small building materials company, then things went up and we grew into a solid construction company.
While I was in business, I had a daughter, Oksana. My wife did not work, she had all the household chores. Do you know what a baby’s body smells like? They say that this smell is special, it can neither be described nor compared to anything, it is extraordinary. Well, I don’t know that smell. I sometimes took the baby in my arms, but only to put it in a wheelchair and go to the park for a walk. While we were walking, I calculated the estimates and calculated what is better to buy and how to sell. So I didn’t notice how my child grew up and walked on his own, how he said the first word, how he learned to read and write. I didn’t have time. I have already started building a house on an individual project. In addition to the house, on the same site, I planned to set up a chic park area with benches, a stone garden, a fountain, garden trees, so that I could walk with my family, sit on a green lawn, enjoying birds singing and slowly drinking coffee, wrapped in a blanket when the autumn cool comes… It was my dream. But it wasn’t meant to happen because I died.
When we poured concrete under the foundation of the house, my daughter went to first grade. I couldn’t take her to school for the first time because there was an important meeting with the contractors. When the walls of the house were being built, my daughter approached me more than once with a request to help with homework. I kissed her on the head and sent her to my mom because I had important calculations.
I rarely spoke to my wife because I had to work. I shied away from her requests for a walk, and eventually she stopped bothering me with her requests. Even on vacation, when I had the opportunity to be together, I kept up with my computer, checked my estimates, held online meetings, in general, actively prepared for the happy life that I was not destined to live. I didn’t really live, I was sleeping and dreaming about how I’d live someday.
I woke up when I broke my hand, digging in the garden, and my efforts were insignificant. The plaster was applied, but the cause of this fracture was not clear. We decided to check and it turned out that these were metastases that came from the liver. Analyses showed that they are everywhere and the operation is out of the question. All the doctors were unanimous that I was going to die, but there was disagreement about when. At first I didn’t believe it, then I fell to such a low of despair that if someone had shot me then I would have kissed his hands. And then… then I accepted and accepted that I was leaving this world. And then I finally woke up…
I began to look at the world with astonishment and noticed with amazement that life was boiling around me, of which I had no idea before. What was amazing to me was the winter drawing on the window. I couldn’t get away from his intricate pattern for a long time. When I put a sunflower seed on the windowsill, I saw the blues, probably also for the first time in my life. They, it turns out, fly up and take turns grabbing the seed, flying away immediately to break it up on the nearest branch. Calmly and without gamma, unlike sparrows who arrange fights and showdowns, who will get more. I had very little time left and began to live greedily.
I took my wife by the hand and went out with her. My God! What an amazing feeling when you have the hand of a loved one in your hand, you go and feel its warmth, and you don’t need anything else. How could I not have understood this before?
Daughter… I went into her room and hugged her for the first time. No, I’ve certainly hugged her before, but it wasn’t a hug, it was a superficial touch that I didn’t even feel. For the first time in my life, I felt her love. Her tender little heart was filled with love and devotion. I hugged Xyusha tightly by the fragile waist, put my head on her shoulder and began to sob like a small child. I don’t remember how long it lasted, but she stood still the whole time, holding me tightly.
A new world began to open up before me. Autumn gave me its smells. The crumpled maple leaves smelled like last hot summer. The morning dew droplets fascinated with their beauty, in the convex reflections of which the first sunlight was reflected. Flocks of birds gathered on bare autumn trees and mysteriously talked about something in their incomprehensible language. I felt that they, like me, were afraid to fly to other places, but they, like me, would have to.
My last vacation at sea with my family was in mid-October. Strangely, I went to the sea with them sometimes even twice a year, but then for the first time I discovered that the sea, it turns out, smells. It’s a romantic smell of scarlet sails, and it seemed to me that the footprints in the sand left Asol’s air feet as she walked along the coastline, listened to the music of the waves and dreamed of her love. The sea reminded me of something remote, forgotten, childish: parents, a Soviet recreation center, the smell of boiled shrimp in a bucket. It didn’t seem to be with me, but with someone else.
And then I suddenly remembered a completely forgotten episode from my childhood. When I helped our fifth-floor neighbor down to the bench near the entrance. There was no elevator in the house, and she had sore legs. So she rarely went outside. I remember helping her sit on the bench, how she looked up and said, «Oh, what grace, how good, what grace.» Okay? The street is slush, dirt, damp, what good is there? I remember being surprised at the time but saying nothing. But now I look at all this and think – how really good, what a grace! How good it is when you can breathe in this autumn freshness with your lungs, when you can feel the wet drops of rain on your face… and the tears that flowed in a small salt stream from my fading eyes.
I’ve never prayed before. During the wedding, the father told us that we should read Our Father at home and something else. I made it a rule to read Our Father before going to bed. I read this prayer mechanically like a spell and went to bed. Things are different now. I understood the word with which prayer began. A loving father on whom my whole life depends, with whom I had no connection, but now I have found. A strange feeling of wild fear of death and a new, emerging love-based relationship with God. The only thing that saved me from despair was the hope that He, my Father, was there, that He heard me, understood me, loved me, knew what was going on inside me. This did not remove my fears, but somehow transformed them, gave me the strength to control myself.
I had a great need for prayer. It was impossible not to pray. Prayer and life have become a whole. Everything was rethought radically. What was important and meaningful became small and insignificant. What I didn’t pay attention to was the most important thing. The warmth of friends, the love of relatives, the enduring value of every elusive moment of life.
It really doesn’t matter what you’re wearing, what your car is, or how much money you have. The important thing is that you can love, live, do good, give thanks, grow spiritually. This is all the real joy of being.
Jesus Christ! Only now, on the verge of death, did I realize that my true calling, like all of us, was to BE, not to HAVE. I had to give an example of what a husband, father, friend should be, just a passer-by in life, not indifferent to life. My whole life before my illness was a carnival, where I danced in a mask, changing it depending on the dance and partner. I was floating on the surface of the water of life, while all that was most valuable and meaningful was in its depths. I began to get sick and suffer, but it seemed to me that along with the pain, something bad and disgusting came out of me.
Everything I could get from God and from people made me very grateful. For every kind gesture, smile, good movement of the heart, I was ready to respond with a hug and tears of love. All people began to seem so kind and good to me, so much so that I never ceased to be amazed at their kindness. I wanted only one thing: to forgive everyone, to forgive everyone, to thank everyone, to wish salvation of the soul.
When the nurse came into my ward, corrected the pillow and blanket, I could not thank her with words, because I could not speak, but my heart cried with tears of gratitude.
I could no longer thank all those who stood at my grave, but I embraced each of them with my heart and with tears I said to each one, “Thank you.” I want you to know that. They knew I loved you all very much. What life is, I understood only at the very end. I thank God for giving me this opportunity, because it might not have happened. I understood happiness. It is impossible to find, capture and put in a jar. It’ll die like a moth.
Happiness is in the present moment, it is intangible.
Happiness is joy. It is a constant and enduring feeling of inner bliss.
Happiness is the God I found at the end of the journey and fell into His open embrace.
Archpriest Igor Ryabko
The Holy Land Charitable Foundation
Soul investment!
Orthodox stories from life
