In May 2000, just before my birthday on May 12, we received a letter from Galina, Nikolai’s girlfriend, from Poltava, Ukraine, that Nikolai Gelya, my first husband and father of my daughter, had gotten drunk and stepped out of a window of their sixth-floor apartment, saying, “I’m leaving.” His daughter Anna, whom he’d had with my former girlfriend, Olga, had been visiting him at the time. This news was shocking to us. A little later, we sent money to Anna so she could buy a decent gravestone for Nikolai. We do not know if she did. I corresponded with Galina for some time and even sent her money when she had surgery, but then her letters stopped coming. All I know is that she had a married son with two children, whom she visited often. For Natasha and me, it was difficult to take in how Nikolai ended his life. We were deeply and utterly bewildered and sad, having never expected what had occurred.
Life is like a game of chess. To win, you have to make a move. But sometimes even to live is an act of courage.
In the summer of 2000, we bought a miniature white poodle. He was born on June 6, 2000; when we brought him to the Virginia home, he was eight weeks old and was the size of my palm. We named him Sasha. Sasha was a beloved member of our family for seventeen years and four months. He loved to run in our back yard and walk in the park with Sparky. Sasha traveled with us a lot—by car and by airplane. We groomed Sasha by ourselves. He was a very sweet and beloved dog. He passed away on October 7, 2017, in Florida.
That same year, 2000, my cousin Vitalik immigrated from Yalta, Ukraine. He came by himself; his parents stayed in Yalta. Originally, Vitalik lived with Rimma and Yury—they had just bought a house in Virginia. I invited Vitalik to move into our house because I thought we had better living conditions for him and could provide better help with finding his way in a new country. Back in Yalta, Vitalik had been working as a doctor. We knew that becoming a doctor in the United States would require a lot of hard work and would take a long time. Vitalik stayed with us for one-and-a-half years until he could get a decent job and rent his own apartment. Today Vitalik works as a doctor at the Cleveland Clinic and lives in Cleveland, Ohio, with his wife, Ella, and son, Erik.
Sparky and I got married on October 14, 2000, in our back yard. It was a warm and tender autumn day. Our back yard was nicely decorated with a wedding arch and flowers. All of our children and relatives came to celebrate with us. We exchanged vows: “I take you to be my wife/husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part, and this is my solemn vow.”
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