Have A Heart!

The sudden news of writer and historian Leanid Mariakou’s critical condition was merely crushing.

Firstly, because I’ve failed to visit him at home. Although he has invited. And I’ve promised.

Secondly, he is a joker, facetious companion, mine of various stories, – and his helpless state due to a serious illness seems to be something incompatible with him.

Thirdly, I am outraged that there are no nurses, diapers and other most trivial things in the hospice, that a man can lie dying and screaming in pain, because someone saves on painkillers.

And still we seek to be called a civilized state, where people would want to live and not be afraid to die...

Well, and, fourthly, I have a vivid recollection of the House of Mercy construction in Minsk. German charities transferred funds for the construction, the money for that noble work was collected from all over the world – from factory workers, students, businessmen. As it was for the Church, for the House of Mercy. As no one knows what will happen to him in his old age ...

How did it fall out that we had been building a tenement for the needy, but ended up with a not the cheapest commercial medical center, not known for whom, – a nursing home for cronies and the rich?

How dared they openly use the generous impulse of a large number of people to help those in need? And today, without batting an eyelid, they charge a dying man $ 500 per month for a bed.

500 dollars!!! Who have such pensions in Belarus? What an old man can afford a quiet retirement in this House of no mercy? Where and who does this money go to?

The Church, which seeks to be a kind of a moral yardstick for the society, could not and was not supposed to let that happen.

The state was not supposed to let that happen, if it indeed intends to retain at least some moral compass in the society.

Sviatlana Kalinkina, Belarusian Partisan