Wednesday, August 26, 2020

Memorial to NATALYA ISATCHENKO Наталья Михайловна Исатченко (1958-2020)

                                                          Natasha, St. Petersburg, Russia, 1998


Novgorod, Russia, 1999

Novgorod, 2000

Наталья Михайловна Исатченко

(Natalya Mikhailovna Isatchenko)

 Наташа, Natasha

(1958-2020)

On August 17, 1958, Natalya Isatchenko was born to a Russian family in the village of Novo-Dubrovka, Kazakhstan, now a new country, but in her time Kazakhstan was still a republic of the Soviet Union. The climate in North Kazakhstan, before the age of the global warming dawned, was Siberian. Winter temperatures were typically as low as minus 30, and the snowfall was incessant. Natasha lived her first thirteen years in Kazakhstan, what she described as a very happy childhood. “I was always laughing and smiling.” That, by the way, got her into a lot of trouble, as Russian culture frowns upon too much levity. “Wipe that stupid grin off your face.” But she never learned to do that.

Her surname is Ukrainian, and her passport reads “Ukrainian;” that mistake was dutifully copied into lots of documents, including her marriage certificate, but Natasha was pure Russian, and she never even set foot in Ukraine until late in her life. Another instance of garbling appears in her family’s spelling of the name, and in the way they pronounce it: some long-lost relative inserted a superfluous letter ‘T’ into the spelling and started putting the stress on the second syllable (it should be stressed on the third: Ees-ah-CHEN-kah).

The garbling theme is appropriate, of course, since her mind and psyche, later in life, were much garbled. On her first day in a Soviet school the teachers told the pupils to pick up their pens and prepare to write. Smiling as usual, little Natalechka picked up the pen with her left hand, whereupon the teacher whacked her on the hand with a ruler. Lefthanded writing was prohibited in Soviet schools. She learned to write with the correct, right hand, but throughout her life she could write mirror-image with her left. She did this naturally, with no concentration. Somewhere I still have a note she wrote to me in mirror imagery: Я тебя люблю: you hold it up to a mirror to read it.

In 1971 the family moved back to Russia, taking up residence in the village of Kagal’nik (also called Dvurechie), not far from the large city of Rostov-on-Don in the south. They still had a few relatives in Kazakhstan, and late in her life one of Natasha’s whimsies involved thoughts of returning to her country of birth. After completing secondary school in Kagal’nik, Natalya enrolled in a pharmaceutical institute in Pyatigorsk, where she completed a higher education in pharmacy and became a pharmacist. She worked in pharmacies in the city of Ivanovo, near the Volga River. Always intelligent and hard-working, she soon earned the respect of her superiors and became head pharmacist for the whole region, in charge of all the pharmacies there.

After meeting Andrei Titov, an artist, Natalya followed him to the city of St. Petersburg, where she continued working as a pharmacist. Although never legally married to Titov, she had a son by him, Andrei, born in 1987. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, in 1998, Natalya met an American, the Russian professor, Robert Bowie, and they were married in St. Petersburg, on June 21, 2000. In late 2000 the family moved to the U.S., living in Greenville, SC, where Natalya found immediate employment as a Pharmacy Technician.

Always a gentle soul, in some ways childlike, Natalya had a psyche that was delicate, and the stress of a new life—new language, new culture, new everything—told on her. In 2004 she began having serious issues with mental illness; although still somehow able to hold down a job, she was assailed by voices screaming obscenities in her head. For the rest of her life on earth she never rid herself of those voices.

Her original plan involved working to achieve full status as a pharmacist in the U.S. She had already taken several important steps toward that goal, but her mental illness put a halt to the dream. She sought help in the Russian Orthodox Church, hoping somehow that the devils she felt in herself could be exorcised. In 2007 she made a pilgrimage back to Russia, to the most holy site in the country, the Trinity-St. Sergius Monastery, where she remained for a week, trying to purge herself of her affliction. She took part in public ceremonies of exorcism run by a priest called Father German.

The exorcisms were of no avail, and she returned to Rostov-on-Don, where her sister helped her check into a psycho ward. She was treated there for several months with heavy injections of an antipsychotic drug, and when she returned to her husband in the U.S., in March of 2008, she walked and acted like a zombie. The side effects of the drugs were as bad as the illness. Over the next few years, she tried taking several other anti-psychotics, but nothing really helped.

In her confused mind Natasha had a habit of assigning persons around her to the camp of the devil. Her husband had tried to help her and take care of her for years, but after losing her last job as a pharm tech in 2010, she declared him to be the devil’s minion and insisted upon a divorce. When they split finally, in late 2011, she departed South Carolina for Alaska.

Why Alaska? In the year 2004, at the beginning of her serious travails, her husband had taken her, as a birthday present, on a trip to Alaska. Although she was seriously ill in her psyche, they had a good time, spending almost a week in August, driving around the Kenai Peninsula. Only a few years later did she reveal to him what had, supposedly, happened to her at the St. Innocent Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Anchorage.

“There were little demons there at the church, and they took me and crucified me, and they tore out my soul from my body.” She stuck to this story for years, declaring that she had to go back to Alaska and find her lost soul. She lived out the final nine years of her life in Kodiak, where she was sometimes homeless, but also sometimes earned good money working in the canneries. She made frequent visits back to her family in Russia, even helped her mother financially. Wherever she was, she walked incessantly, as she had done back in Carolina, and people around Kodiak knew her as the lady who walked. And talked in Russian to the bushes and trees. On August 19, 2020, the day of the Feast of the Transfiguration, Natasha was walking down a road at six in the morning, when she was hit by a car and killed.

Survivors include her relatives in the Russian Federation—her mother and brother Viktor in the village of Kagal’nik, her sister Lyudmila in Rostov-on-Don—her son Andrei Isatchenko of Charlottesville, Virginia, and her husband Robert Bowie, of Gainesville, Florida.


                                                     Vero Beach, Florida, January, 2000



                                                    Florida Gulf Coast, January, 2000



                                        At White House, Washington, DC, February, 2000



Autobiographical Note: My Family’s Life, My Life

by Natalya Isatchenko

                When I was born my family consisted of my mother, my father and my sister. My mother was twenty-four years old, my father was thirty-one, and my sister was one year and three months. My family was living in a small village in North Kazakhstan when I was born. Kazakhstan is a country in Asia. At that time it was a part of the Soviet Union, one of fifteen republics. Now it is a new country, not a part of Russia.

                My father had been working as an accountant, and my mother had been working in the library. Now I don’t remember anything that happened until I was three-five years old. When I was three years old my brother was born. I don’t remember if I had toys. Maybe never because my parents were not rich. One thing I remember well is nature. Our village was in the forest. There were a lot of birches. I have loved birches since my childhood, and I love birch leaves. I remember that my sister and I made wreaths from birch leaves with our hands (weaving), and put them on our heads. We wove dandelions into the wreaths, and how beautiful this looked! I even remember how birch leaves smell. Especially when they are fresh and sticky in early spring. Close to our village we had a lake where we used to fish; this lake had a lot of white geese. My father liked hunting. He was a great hunter.

                When I was five years old my family moved to a different village, only nine kilometers from my old village. This village was named Dubrovnoe, and in fact I was born there, because the small hospital (“birthing home”) was only there. My father became the main accountant at this State Farm, and my mother began studying accounting in the technical college. I remember this time very well. We bought a TV and a car. I remember how we put up an antenna, and then the TV began to work. It was a concert, a dancing program. I was five years old and I remember how I was feeling. I was so surprised that in a little box (screen) the people were dancing! In the evenings when we children went to bed, my parents turned on the TV in a different room, and we were not sleeping. We tried to see the movies. We did this so quietly.

                My father went to the forest and the lake very often in the car, and he always took us with him. He shot wild ducks, and we ran and got them. We played the role of dogs. My father liked his car—he still has this car, it is thirty-nine years old, and we moved in this car from Asia to Europe in 1971, across the Ural Mountains, in April, when there was a lot of snow everywhere. He liked to drive very fast. He drove fast when he was in the car without my mother. When she drove the car she always went at a low speed.

                When I was eight years old my family moved to a different village, named Sivkovo, which is two hours from Dubrovnoe by car. We moved because my father was sent there to develop a new State Farm. We lived there three years, and all the rest of my life I have remembered this time with great warmth and love. It’s such a pity we moved from this village later; I had never seen a more beautiful place in my life. We had a very good house. We built much of the house ourselves. Me too! It was very close to a beautiful lake in the forest. Another birch forest. We had a very good school, very smart teachers. Since then I’ve loved sports very much. I began to play handball, volleyball, tennis, went skiing, dancing. I received so many good things from this school. Since then I have loved studying different school subjects, and I have never forgotten this time. It was the most lovely time of my life.

                My father began to have problems when we first moved there. When we were putting all our things on the truck, my father’s mother didn’t want to go. She was crying and saying, “Everything is done, all is lost.” When we came to the new village, on the first day all our livestock were shot. People from this village were afraid of a disease (hoof and mouth disease). They thought we had brought it from our village. My father later began to have problems with his job. It was the most difficult time in his life. This happened because of his boss, the director of the State Farm. My father is a very smart, honest person who knew his job well, but circumstances of the Soviet Union were not in favor of such persons. My father wanted to seek justice. He was a Communist, and the doctrines of Communism sounded very good. He believed in communist doctrine. He sought justice until he was retired at age 59. He was twice deprived of his party card, the last time when he was 59. By that time he already understood what Communism means, but the first time (at age 40) he thought that if the people were Communists, they were supposed to be clever, honest and just.

                So we moved from this place to a different place, also in North Kazakhstan. We lived one year in a village named Beloe. I didn’t like that place, that school, or the nature there. My father had a big problem with people who worked with him. These people also wanted to take state property. So we moved from “Asia to Europe.” That sounds funny! Now, for thirty years, my parents have been living in a village named Dvurechie, close to the Azov Sea in the south of Russia. My sister, my brother, and I finished school in this village. I lived there four years. My father first worked as an accountant, but very soon he quit his job because he understood that he couldn’t work such a job. Everywhere he met such dishonest people. It didn’t depend on places where we lived. It depended on the political system of the Soviet Union. If people began working in high positions, they began to become not good as persons. I noticed that these kind of people wanted to receive a job higher up because they wanted to have power over people.

                My father worked as a driver, then maybe two years as deputy director at a farm where there were a lot of cows. He became the best deputy director of a small such farm in all of Russia. They showed him on national TV news, with the Minister of Agriculture, who came to our farm. Before he came everybody was laughing, because the director made them paint all the tree trunks on the farm and decided to put rugs down over the whole place—so the Minister would not step in the mud and cow manure! My father began receiving a salary twice as much as the director of the State Farm, and this director kicked him out and took his party card. Such people always found reasons. This happened with a lot of good people in Russia. I’m glad my father didn’t go to prison, as a lot of good people in Russia did. He lost his job, his party card when he was fifty-nine years old. Since then he has lost his health. He worked as a carpenter the last year until he was retired. Since then he has found his hobby: taking care of bees. Now he is seventy-four years old, and he is sick now. I worry about him every day.

                When Russia began breaking with the old regime in 1986-87 my father was so happy. But this period has been going on in Russia already for fifteen years, and still there is no good news about the Russian political and economic system. When my father worked as a carpenter, my parents decided to build a new house. It took about eight-ten years for them to build it, and now they have been living in this house about seven years. I’m so happy about that, because when they lived in the old house they received a lot of trouble from our neighbors. Those neighbors even poisoned the bees. My father was very sick about that. I think he still couldn’t understand such people.

                After finishing my school, I worked two-three weeks as a milkmaid; then I worked at a secret factory named “Electroapparat” for eight months. In the Soviet Union a lot of factories were secret. We worked for the military. After that year I studied for five years in a Pharmaceutical Institute. Now it is called a Pharmaceutical Academy. We’ve changed all names in our country since the new system started. When I was studying in my institute I had a very good time. I liked this time very much. I lived in the Caucasus Mountains—between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, close to Turkey. I liked studying nature and plants there. Especially I loved the subject named pharmacognosy, where I studied herbs (natural medicine). Since then I’ve been interested in nature, herbs, active ingredients in the herbs. In Russia maybe thirty percent of drugstore medications and remedies are herbs. Ten percent are homeopathic. Another twenty percent are things like hot water bottles, ear syringes, enemas, etc. Only forty percent are chemical medicines. I don’t like it when people take strong chemical medications. I think that first people should try herbal remedies, homeopathic medicine, and only if this is no help, then they need to try a chemical product.

                After school my sister had been studying accounting for three years in a university. Then she was married when she was twenty years old. Her son was born a year later, and her daughter was born six years after that. Now her son has graduated from university (last year) and has been working for a gas company. Her daughter now is a sophomore in the university. My brother was in the army while I was at my university (pharm institute). It was a very hard time for our family. In Russia we still have obligatory military duty. In 1979, after three months on the Russian border with Turkey, my brother was sent to Afghanistan, to the war there. After two years in Kabul he was wounded and spent six months in a hospital in the city of Ashkhabad, Turkmenistan. Since then he has never felt well. Sometimes he is so nervous. I love my brother very much and also his wife. They are so good! They have a son fifteen years old, the best friend of my son. My brother lives very close to my parents, and I’m so happy because of that. My brother after the army studied in a technical college and since then he has been working as a driver on a State Farm.

                After university I was working for five years in a drugstore close to Moscow, near the river named Volga. I was the head pharmacist for the whole area. I ordered medications, checked all the drugstores in my area, and my workers liked me there. Then I met my son’s father and moved to Leningrad, which was his home town—now this city has its old name back, St. Petersburg. I liked living in St. Petersburg very much. This is the most beautiful city I’ve ever seen. I wish everyone could visit St. Petersburg; there are so many good things for the soul there.

                My son was born when I was twenty-nine years old. I decided not to marry my son’s father. He is an artist. He has never had a family and he likes a free life. So, my son did not have a father for twelve years. We lived together, my son and I, and we are very close to each other. Now, thanks God, I have a family for two and a half years already, and I’m so happy with my husband and son.

 

[Note written in Greenville, SC, in 2001, as an assignment for a class in English as a foreign language]

 

                                                           Wedding Day, June 21, 2000


                                                  Working in Pharmacy, Greenville, SC, 2003

                                                    Isle of Palms, South Carolina, 2003


Blue Ridge Parkway, NC, Apr. 28, 2004

Alaska, Aug. 29, 2004


                                          Elagin Palace, St. Petersburg, Russia, June 11, 2005

                                                           Hawaii, September, 2009




3 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I send you my sympathy, dear Bob, on the tragic death of Natalya.
    Christy
    Christy Sheffield Sanford

    ReplyDelete
  3. We remember Natalya coming to our Balalaika practice and listening to the Russian songs in Kodiak, Alaska.

    ReplyDelete