At 99, Grandpa Demko is about to plant his garden

My native street in one of Volyn oblast’s largest villages, Lavriv (a score of kilometers from Lutsk), numbers fifteen houses on both of its sides. It is the central street of the village and its historical center. The landowner’s mansion was once there, with its ruins later rebuilt into the local collective farm’s infrastructure. To the right was the collective farm’s office and to the left a store which is still there. As the street takes most of the village traffic, there is always a blanket of dust over it. There are no nice modern houses on the street as there are no husbandmen left, just twelve widows in all the fifteen houses. The houses to the right standing on a hill have no men, only widows, and you can find a lonely widow in twelve households there. Only one man, called Grandpa Demko by neighbors, Demian Ivanovych Antoniuk, has managed to live to a ripe old age with his wife Grandma Hulka, having buried his 93-year old spouse five years ago. With God’s blessing, he is on track to mark his centenary on August 15 this year.

Time seems to have stopped in this home. Just as his deceased wife used to do, Grandpa Demko makes his bed every morning, tidying the feather bed quilts, covering them with lace bed sheets and a nice bedspread, with several embroidered pillows on top of it. He seldom takes naps during the day, spending the time at work. Even if he feels like catching some sleep, he does it on the sofa behind the stove. The sofa is neatly done, as if in preparation for Easter.

We arrived when the elderly man had cut some wood to burn in the stove and (what do you suppose?) was making pastry for quick halushky (boiled lumps of dough). He chopped the pastry into small even pieces and also prepared a piece of fatback to be cut into small cubes, fried, and served with the halushky. The water to boil the pastry was almost ready.

“Remember how I danced at your wedding, Natalia? My feet almost touched the ceiling!” My neighbor recalls this and, having made a mental reckoning of his age, I find out with astonishment that he was 76 at the time. Six months away from his centenary, he still feels the rhythm when music is played: “Two weeks ago my grandson threw a party after his child was christened, so I had a good dance alone, couldn’t keep still, you know, although my legs are too weak.”

Ailing legs and general weakness (to get up from the chair, Grandpa has to make several rocking movements first) are his major problems on the eve of his jubilee. He has never had headaches nor taken any medication. His memory is wonderful and hearing still good (“I can hear a mouse moving underneath the floor”). The fall before last his eyes became afflicted, and his son Mykola who had long lived in Kovel took him to the hospital for medical examination. With his heart and other organs found in good condition, Mr. Antoniuk had eye surgery on November 24, 2000 in Chernivtsi. Although only one eye was operated on, he can now see with it better than many his junior. This was the only surgery he has had in his life.

That Grandpa Demko will turn one hundred on the Savior Day I learned from my mother. Once, he grumbled that in one of the areas that make up the village younger and healthier residents were late in harvesting wheat and it was covered by an early snow. “Demko is almost a hundred, but you should have seen the number of jars with tomatoes he canned last year,” my mother said in wonder. It is amazing how much interest, let alone strength, he still has for such work.

“I have become almost a beggar, Natalia,” he complains, remembering the time when he and Grandma Hulka had cattle, poultry, and a sizable garden; but now his cow barn is empty. Still, he never fails to keep a watchful eye over his sons and grandsons doing their spring sowing.

“They are angry with me, protesting over how long I am going to give orders to them. The orders will stop when I keel over.”

Last year, when Grandpa Demko was 99, he sowed the tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, and beets by himself. His action plan for the coming spring is the same: first to seed small pots and then replant them in a small hothouse. He sows flowers, which he likes very much, separately. In winter both rooms in his house are decorated with artificial flowers while in summer bouquets can be seen all around it. His instructions to children are that when he dies they make sure to put a lot of flowers in the casket.

He was well over ninety when he learned how to cook borshch, varenyky, halushky, pampushky, make sauerkraut, and pickle cucumbers and tomatoes. He learned under the guidance from his wife who, sensing her near end, wanted her husband to know how to take care of the cooking. Grandpa is proud of his skills, saying he likes cooking best. One of his daughters lives nearby and she drops in every morning. Other relatives now living in Kovel also visit him frequently, but Grandpa can still bring water from the well and scrub the floors himself with rare exceptions when he feels under the weather.

“I usually put a pot of water in the oven to get warm for my morning washing and shaving, and I take a complete bath every week. I also wash my underwear myself.”

Grandpa Demko has always been a very orderly and tolerant person. When he was head of the local post office he was the first villager to get a phone line. He never lost patience when the neighbors asked to use his telephone or their children living in Lutsk flooded him with requests to call their mom or dad.

“I never ignored a request to address a letter or fill in a form even if I was in the middle of some work,” he recalls.

Grandpa Demko assures me that he does not fear death, saying that he feel like he will never die. We share his view that a human life is but an instant of eternity, flying so fast that the lives of many cannot be remembered well. The husband of Aunt Olha, my mother’s sister, died thirty-two years ago. At forty-two, she remained a widow with four children to feed, with the youngest one and a half years old. My father also died prematurely, at fifty-eight. My mother’s brother Uncle Vasyl, a gifted fiddler, forester, and a great lover of nature and life also died young, just as another neighbor and godfather to one of my children, Tolik, an avid amateurish actor. He was followed by another neighbor and godfather, Mykola. In the last thirty-two years our street has seen more funerals than marriages.

Still, Grandpa Demko has no recipe for longevity. A lover of very fat food, his favorite is lard which he can eat even when there is no bread to go with it. He has never smoked or drunk alcohol. Working hard all his life, Grandpa married at thirty-seven after he had earned enough money to buy a home and furniture. He survived his father who died from typhus when Grandpa was not even school age, as well as his mother and sister who both died easily in their sleep, at 93 and 96 respectively. On the other hand, he admits that he wants to live and do some more work, being taken good care by his children. But thoughts about the afterlife are increasingly with him and he begs the Lord to give him an easy death.