This content has been archived. It may no longer be relevant
I live in a “poustinia in the marketplace,”*, as our foundress Catherine Doherty called it. Like any poustinik, my first work is prayer. But the poustinia (my little apartment) only has three walls with the fourth always open to serve my neighbors.
Being the resident manager here at Beacon Lodge*, I am in an ideal situation to be available to serve others.
For one thing, since I am the person who collects the rent, I am the one people turn to when they have difficulty paying on time. This provides an opportune time to hear the stories of their lives and struggles, which I then take to prayer.
Over the years here, I’ve heard many stories. Some are more unusual than others. The following is one of the unusual stories.
***
Ella was the first tenant I met when I took on the work/ministry of resident manager here at Beacon Lodge. She arrived from Toronto with her friend to find an apartment in Victoria for her retirement.
It happened that the manager’s apartment was available and although I was eligible for it, I didn’t need it. Ella fell in love with it and had to have it. Nothing else would satisfy her. We accepted her “on speculation,” and she turned out to be one of our most interesting tenants.
Initially, I spent a lot of time helping Ella navigate the details of settling in, like dealing with the hydro (electric), phone, and cable companies. As we waited for a live person to answer our calls, she told me her story.
Ella, who was of German descent, was born in Moscow. When she was six years old, her father, an engineer, was arrested during one of Stalin’s purges and taken to the gulag. Her mother, a Jewish dentist, her younger brother, and Ella, were sent into exile in Siberia.
After a few years they returned to Russia to the city of Saratov on the Volga River. Eventually Ella’s father returned to the family, but he was a broken man and he died soon afterwards. Her mother supported the family by working for the Soviet state.
At age 17 Ella went to Vilnius, Lithuania, to visit her aunt, her mother’s sister. She figured that by marrying a Lithuanian she could escape from the Soviet Union. So she found a husband, but the marriage did not go well. It did, however, produce a little girl, Janna, the apple of Ella’s eye.
To support herself and her daughter, Ella put Janna in the state daycare system, returned to school, and became a lawyer.
A few years later, her husband and mother-in-law immigrated to Israel. They sent Ella the money for her and Janna to join them, but instead, Ella decided to go with Janna to Canada.
Ella arrived in Toronto knowing no one and not a word of English. Members of the Russian Jewish community helped her find accommodations and enrolled her in a secretarial course. But without the language, Ella couldn’t learn the necessary skills.
She seemed to have few prospects until a friend noticed she had beautiful skin and suggested she become an esthetician. Not only did she make a success of it, but she eventually opened her own business with a large clientele, many of whom became her friends.
Ella was full of passion and energy. She was larger than life and sometimes louder, too. When she phoned Janna in Paris, she could be heard all over the neighborhood.
She seemed to have boundless energy as she went off on hiking adventures to Alaska, Oregon and Southeast Asia.
Having grown up in the Soviet Union, Ella had no particular faith, although she attended synagogue occasionally. She dabbled in Buddhism and yoga meditation, but otherwise nature was more her religion than anything else.
One day she asked me about our foundress, Catherine Doherty. I told her Catherine’s story and loaned her Lorie Duquin’s biography, They Called Her the Baroness.
Ella was stunned. Pre-revolution history was not taught in state schools, and she had no idea that the Russian Revolution had been so brutal or that there was such a beautiful Russian culture before 1917.
Together Ella and I began reading stories of the Russian Revolution and about the imperial family and Russian nobility.
Every book opened to Ella a world she could not imagine, and it explained what was missing in her understanding of the Russian writers, poets, artists and musicians she so loved.
Ella was constantly amazed at what had occurred and deeply saddened by what had been lost in her country.
As Ella became more settled and made other friends, we spent less time together. Still, she invited me for tea, saying in her heavy Russian accent, “I always feel good when you are here.”
Then one day she called me in her usual commanding way, “Come!” Something in her voice told me it was important. When I arrived, Ella unwound the scarf she was wearing around her neck and revealed an egg-sized lump on her neck. She told me the tumor was malignant and required complicated surgery as it had enclosed her jugular vein.
After much discussion with doctors, her daughter, and me, she decided to go to Toronto where she was seen by the best surgeon at Mt. Sinai Hospital.
The surgery was successful and follow-up was recommended, but Ella was not one to take medications.
She wanted to beat the cancer using natural methods and her own determination, which had saved her in the past.
She decided not to do radiation treatment but to try a form of marijuana paste. She asked me to be with her when she took her first dose. She knew she was taking her life in her hands.
At first Ella seemed to improve but eighteen months later, the tumor was growing again, rapidly.
She now tried radiation, but it was unsuccessful. When Ella was hospitalized for the last time, Janna came from Paris where she was working and living with her young family, to be with her mother, but Ella was so angry at dying that Janna couldn’t stay with her for too long, So she came to stay in my poustinia as it was the only place she could find rest and peace from the stress.
After a hard few weeks, even though Ella was near the end, Janna returned to Paris.
About a week after that, Ella died unexpectedly during the night. Her brother intended to be with her before she died, but as his visa was delayed, he didn’t arrive from Ukraine until after his sister’s death.
When Janna returned from Paris to be with him, he conducted a memorial at the seaside scattering some of Ella’s ashes. Janna took the remainder back to Paris and eventually buried them beside Ella’s mother in Saratov.
Last summer, Janna and her family returned to Victoria to tie up loose ends from her mother’s estate. As I am now living in Ella’s former apartment, it was an emotional moment when Janna entered my apartment. But seeing bits and pieces of Ella’s things that Janna had left behind, incorporated into the décor brought her great joy.
Janna and I enjoyed several visits together remembering Ella, telling each other stories of our times with her.
Janna and her family came for a good-bye supper before their return to Paris. The smiles and laughter of that evening will remain with me for a long time, as will the memory of my friend Ella.
*a prayer house located, not in an isolated spot, but in the heart of a town or city.
** Beacon Lodge is an unusual apartment complex, one in which the managers work to create an environment where people who live alone can have some community life while still maintaining their autonomy and privacy. In fact, the family which owns it sees itself as operating a ministry of family and community rather than a business.
