Edith Umova

This is me in this photo. This photo was taken in Tallinn in 1990. In the late 1980s my mother fell ill. I worked in the DOSAAF then. My workplace wasn't far from my home, and I came home to serve my mother lunch and sit with her a little. This was during the Soviet rule, when medical care was free of charge. Doctors and nurses from the polyclinic visited my mother to give her an injection or other necessary procedures. They cured my mother then, but a few years later she fell ill again. The Soviet Union collapsed, and things became more difficult. However, we finally managed to take my mother to the hospital and she recovered again. However, then one disease followed another. She had heart problems, or biliary calcula and then pneumonia. I no longer worked and had time to nurse my mother. My mother was at home and then in the hospital. I guess it was only then that I felt myself as adult. Of course, I had some assistance, but I had to rely on myself and make decisions. My mother was ill for eight years, and spent her last days in hospital. She was bedridden, and it was hard for me to lift her from her bed to change the bed sheets. The Jewish community that was established in Estonia in 1985 helped me a lot. This was the first officially registered Jewish community in the USSR. The community assigned a visiting nurse who provided medications. However, I still had to agree to take my mother to the hospital. I visited her frequently. My mother was conscious and had a clear mind. She even made friends there. In 1993 my friends and I celebrated my mother's birthday in the hospital. My mother turned 95. I was so upset that there wasn't much I could give my mother and that she had to stay in the hospital. I was dreaming of selling our apartment and buying a smaller apartment to have some money to hire a nurse and take my mother home. Well, things do not happen that fast, and I failed to implement this dream. My mother died in the hospital on 27th January 2005. I buried her in the Jewish cemetery and had a gravestone placed on her grave. The Jewish community helped me.