Mission Accomplished

I didn’t talk much about the main goal of my current trip because it sounded so unrealistic that I didn’t want to jink it. I still can’t believe that I did it! Here is how yesterday went.

We grabbed our brown bag breakfast at reception at 6 AM, went to the railway station, and boarded the 6-46 AM train to Narva. Although I researched in advance what bus we should take and when it was scheduled to depart, we managed to take the wrong bus and ended up in the wrong place. Thankfully, Estonia is small, and you can’t go too far! We were able to hire a private driver who got us to the right place, and shortly after 11 AM, we were at Narva-Joesuu, where I spent three amazing summers when I was a child!

My most important goal was to find the grave of my great-grandfather (the father of Baba Fania, Baba Grunia, and Uncle Misha). He died while vacationing there, and Baba Fania used to take me to his gravesite. I felt like for the past forty years, nobody ever gave a thought to his grave left behind in a foreign country. I mean, I do not feel super-obligated to attend to all the graves of the relatives I never even talked to, but if you care about the ancestors’ graves in general, I would imagine you should be concerned. Anyway, I felt I should at least try. I had nothing but childhood memories of how the place should look like fifty-three years ago, and even though the cemetery is small, it’s not that small – it has been continuously operating, at least since the end of the nineteenth century.

My first walk-thought didn’t yield any result – I remembered the memorial being sort of standing up above the other graves around it. I also remembered it being on the hill and being very light grey. On my second pass, I started almost from the entrance, trying to remember the general direction and adjusting the distances and size to the seven-year-old me. And then I got a feeling. I turned slightly left and back and saw the surrounding chains, and I knew that was it! I was sure the memorial sign didn’t survive – I passed multiple graves with no name on them, but even if there wasn’t a sign, I knew. And then I walked around it, and the sign was there!

Boris waited for me in the main alley, and I ran all across the cemetery to tell him that I found the grave! We walked back together. Unfortunately, there was no service point at the cemetery. I talked to the old couple who were visiting a nearby grave. The husband remembered the last name Levitin, but he said he used to be friends with “a younger guy.” That could be only Uncle Misha, but the name didn’t ring a bell to him. They didn’t share any contact information, so I just asked them to take a look at David Solomonovish’s grave when they came to visit his mother’s grave. Her name sounded somewhat familiar to me as well, but I also can’t put a finger on it. I copied the contact information of the cemetery administration from the board at the entrance, and I will try to arrange some care for the gravesite.

And I found a wild strawberry in the forest by the cemetery – just like I did when I was a child!

To be continued