Secrets of the Smolensky Cemetery

Momento Mori.

Once, many years ago, I bought a small painting from a street artist, which depicted a cemetery plot that completely did not fit into the framework of our traditional presentation of this theme — the figure of a beautiful young woman in a long dress standing by a lonely grave, around which lilacs and lush foliage were in full bloom. And in the recent past, everything looked completely different, when the topic of cemeteries was considered inconvenient, almost shameful. Of course, because life was rushing only forward, and memory, as a relic of the past, left us and returned only once a year on Easter weekend, when our citizens, armed with agricultural equipment, vodka, snacks and taking with them children who did not understand anything, stormed regular buses plying from city stops to cemeteries...

When I want to be alone, I come here, wander through the alleys, look at the majestic crypts, crooked monuments with peeling paint and old faded photographs, and see how nature carefully shelters them all: people close to us, dear to us and others who once lived, and now they lie side by side. How loudly the July foliage rustles over the graves, graceful butterflies fly briskly, a kaleidoscope of colorful flowers riotously shimmer, and then you feel especially acutely how the fear of death goes away without a trace, yielding to a momentary sadness about the past and a timid hope for a merciful future...

Moscow — St. Petersburg. 2001 — 2020

Alexander Krasotkin.