How my mother was dying - a candid story by Fedor Konyukhov

For every traveler it is no less important than the strength of equipment and the strength of yachts and boats, a firm faith in those who are waiting for them from traveling around the world. They do the most important thing - they are waiting for us. So Naomi waited for him Komiko, so my Irina was waiting for me, so my mother Maria Efremovna waited and prayed. She waited for me while I was making my expedition around Antarctica.
Mama died in the village of Atmanai on the shores of the Azov Sea when she was 93 years and four months old. He and his father lived 73 years together, they had five children, thirteen grandchildren and thirteen great-grandchildren. How easy was her death - her death was very quiet, without suffering and visible torment, she seemed to go out. We buried mom right by the sea.
Her death was a revelation to me in my fifty-nine years.
When I returned from a regular expedition from Greenland, my mother’s eyes did not open, and, like a cornered gazelle, she intermittently, often breathing. But not death occupied her, but she wanted only one thing - to smile.
She waited for me, and it was possible to go to the place where the one from whom no one would dodge when the time came was waiting for her.
I knelt before a dead mother. When she was alive, never did. It's a pity! Even after the coffin was lowered into the ground, I did not rise, and did not want to speak. Mothers were no longer with us, she would not be able to caress, but we still needed her, and, lowering the coffin on the salted fishing ropes into the ground, we knew that we carefully sheltered it with earth, and we did not bury the deceased. We are her children, and there are five of us, gathered at the cemetery, but no one wept. Our weight was the weight of the cornerstone of the temple. All just lowered their eyes, so as not to look at her - death - in the eyes.

March 9, 2008, the Pacific Ocean.

[Recorded from the diary of Archpriest Fedor Konyukhov, made during his solo voyage around the Antarctic in 2008.]