Lullaby to Christ. The doctor's story

This happened in 1986 in a nursing home where I was then working as a therapist. An old woman lived there then on the third floor ... What does it mean - “lived on the third floor”, of course, is incomprehensible to you - is it so important which floor a person lived on? .. But for the staff of this nursing home, and especially - for its inhabitants, the word "third floor" had a very definite, ominous meaning. There were two offices on the third floor. One is for bedridden and dying patients. The other is for patients with mental disorders. The entrance to the third floor was locked with a key. Therefore, not even every worker of a nursing home could get there. There is nothing to say about other patients or relatives. If a person, for one reason or another, got to the third floor, he seemed to have already disappeared from the world of the living. Even if it still existed somewhere out there, behind the closed doors of the third floor ...

So, on this very third floor, the old woman, about whom we will talk now, lived. Her last name was Makarenko. Unfortunately, I forgot her name. Either Evdokia, or Paraskeva. But I well remember her nickname, which all the employees called her behind her back - "Banderovka".

She was brought to our nursing home from some remote logging station. Although she was not originally from our northern places, but from somewhere in Ukraine. She had none of her relatives. And they called her "Bandera" for the following reason. The fact is that, at the sight of any of the people in white coats, she began to babble in a frightened, imploring tone:
-I'm Vkrainka. I am not a banderovka, nor, I am a Vkrainka ... To save mee ... I can do something. I can milk the cow, I can milk it, I can milk it ... Save mee ...

The present did not exist for her. There was only a terrible past, about which one could only guess. And in which she lived to this day. She constantly tried to escape somewhere, to hide. That is why they settled her on the third floor. However, when, through an oversight of the medical staff, the door to the third floor turned out to be unlocked, she ran away from there. All her shoots ended in the same thing - they caught her somewhere in a nook under the stairs, or in a park near a house, or even in a neighboring village, and put her back on the third floor. Back under lock and key.

Her illness was incurable. And there was no hope that the mind would ever return to her. And now I’ll tell you about the future.

So, in 1986, a few days after the New Year's holiday, namely on January 7, the inhabitants of the nursing home staged an impromptu concert in the hall of the second floor, near the library. And now this scene stands before my eyes. About 15-20 old men and women gathered in the hall. Someone settled in a row on chairs with folding seats, those who did not have enough seats, stand, holding on to the backs of chairs or leaning against the window sill. In an armchair with worn green upholstery sits a gray-haired, thin old man with medal strips on his jacket and with already poorly obeying fingers playing something cheerful, dancing on an old accordion with a bell and colored furs. Those who came to live in a nursing home were allowed to take with them the most necessary and valuable things. Some were carrying pillows, some - cuts smelled of mothballs from the cherished chest. But this old man brought an accordion with him ...

Near the old man is a hunched-over old woman in a colored kerchief, from under which strands of gray hair are knocked out, her hands on her hips, stamping her feet in felt bunches. She probably thinks she's sixteen again. And that she rushes in a whirlwind dance. And behind her, fluttering in the wind, flies her thick dark blond braid ...

And suddenly, from somewhere, that old woman appeared - "Banderovka" from the third floor. Apparently, the local nurses and orderlies still continued to celebrate the New Year and therefore left the door unlocked ... When the old man finished playing, she went up to the audience and said that she wanted “sleep. That is why today is the Rizdvo Khristove. " And, without waiting for an answer, she sang a song in a rattling, senile, but clear voice.

Now I know that it was not a song, but a Ukrainian Christmas carol. Usually carols are funny. And that carol, which the old woman sang, was sad. Perhaps even tragic. It was a lullaby to the God-Infant - Christ - "sleep, Jesus, sleep ..." who is loved more than anything else.
I immediately remembered several lines from this carol. True, it may well be that I did not quite understand them correctly, because I do not know the Ukrainian language. But, if you translate them into Russian, then their meaning will probably be like this:

Do not try what will soon be -
People are preparing the cross for you ...

Scary, isn't it? After all, here He is, this helpless Infant, this is "lily", this is "hearty", lying in the manger, smiling and trustingly stretching out his hands to the Virgin Mary, Joseph and everyone he sees before Him. And evil people are already "looking for His soul", preparing for Him, the innocent, a terrible death on the Cross ...

The carol was quite long. But surprisingly, no one interrupted the singing with starushki. Everyone stood in silence and listened. Even those who had a postcard or a newspaper clipping with a portrait of Lenin on the wall or on the windowsill in their room ... Even we, physicians, who at that moment forgot about the subject we once went through called "scientific atheism" ...

The old woman finished the carol, and then silently, without saying a word to anyone, bowed to everyone in the waist and slowly walked to the stairs leading to the third floor ... After she left, the fun somehow immediately stopped. Everyone went their separate ways, each thinking about something different.

Then came the weekend. When I arrived at work on Monday, I learned that the old lady on the third floor had died on Saturday night. Thus, the carol, sung by her two days before her death, became, as they say, her “swan song”. But a strange thing. I have already mentioned that this woman was, as we doctors say, “disoriented in time and space”. She lived on terrible memories of her past. But on that day, January 7, she behaved not like a sick person, but like a healthy one. And she herself, of her own free will, returned to her third floor to die there. But the most important thing is that that day was indeed the Nativity of Christ. Can all that happened be considered a miracle? I believe so.

At the same time, I recall one poem that we once passed in school. They even learned by heart. This is a poem by N. Nekrasov about a prophet whom God sent to "remind the slaves of the earth about Christ." I think that the Lord for a short time returned the mind of this old woman from the third floor, so that she would remind us, the insane "slaves of the earth" and sin, who do not know God, about the most important thing. That on this day “for our sake and for our salvation” the Savior of the world - Christ was born.

Nun Euphemia (Pashchenko)