What I experienced when my beloved grandfather diedtranslated

Anastasia SMIRNOVA (Pisarevskaya)

He died at the very beginning of August. The wind during a thunderstorm broke a young apple tree, already completely strewn with fruits - red, plump, as if drawn in a children's book. He lifted the broken trunk, put up supports - he tore something inside.

The ambulance threw up its hands: drink no-shpa.

For several days he lay on an old sofa, holding his stomach. Occasionally he stood up, staggering. He looked at us with eyes clouded with pain.

And the next morning, when my sister and I ran to them, we saw that he was lying calmly stretched out. Standing above him were his grandmother and his neighbor, Aunt Shura. She turned and said:

- Oh, girls... Your grandfather died...

We started crying. Grandmother said that now my brother would wash him, and we left the hut. Grief did not fit inside; it required some kind of action. And what actions from us, yesterday's children?

We walked into the garden and stopped helplessly at a break in the path.

In the garden, cultivated by his hands, everything was as always. The cabbage sat like a lady in the beds, the apple tree with picturesque apples was green, the cucumber vines were rustling in the breeze, the famous grandfather’s tomatoes were turning red, strewing the bushes in clusters, and it was there, in the tomatoes, that we saw...