A New Lease on Life
October 1 marks International Day of the Elderly, which makes it a holiday for every fifth Ukrainian. While it ranks eleventh among the fastest ageing nations, Ukraine is only 108th in terms of life expectancy. Forty-seven percent of Ukrainian men die before retirement age, while the average Ukrainian woman lives to the age of 72, compared to Japan’s average of 82 years. According to various Labor Ministry reports, those who are listed as socially disadvantaged are mostly people over 60. They develop diseases and apply for medical assistance 2.5 and 1.5 times more often than others. This is not only due to the ailments that come with old age. Doctors are certain that a psychological factor also plays a role. Unfortunately, Ukrainian pensioners are as a rule left out of normal life. Meanwhile, active life in old age is a guarantee of health and longevity, and an indicator of how civilized a nation is, and whether it can ensure a decent life for its elderly citizens. Can Ukraine do this? This question is hard to answer, especially if you go to the nearest bank, where our elderly folks endure lineups in the hope of receiving promised premiums for pensions, complaining that rising prices wiped out all premiums a long time ago. To write about such lineups would be accurate and fair. But we wanted to indulge in dreams or illusions, if you like, and tell our readers about a place where our elderly, to whom we are irredeemably indebted, would feel at home and have a second lease on life. We found such a place.
STATE-SPONSORED OLD AGE
This building has a special ambiance. It is no coincidence that officials who visit it on red-letter days are fond of repeating that the Natalia Uzhviy Stage Veterans’ Home is an outstanding memorial not only in Pushcha Vodytsia but all of Ukraine. The retired actors who live here have easily managed to recreate the spirit of their life in the theatre. Playbills adorn the walls of almost every room. According to the actors, performance photos, portraits of mentors, and sometimes even stage props help them feel connected to this great art.
Pensioners like it here. Nearly half of the Veterans’ Home tenants have normal, often well-to-do families. “But at home you can’t sing your fill in the morning, and the chances of performing Aida’s aria in the evening are slim,” former soloist with the Kyiv Philharmonic Yevheniya Yakubovych says jokingly. Even at eighty years old she is pleased to demonstrate her beautifully preserved soprano. She begins rehearsing long before concerts, to which the residents of the Veterans’ Home look forward with keen expectation. “While some people say prayers before bedtime, I rehearse my repertoire. But I am beginning to forget the texts,” complains Yevheniya Yakubovych.
Incidentally, Yevheniya was one of those who willingly moved into the Veterans’ Home. When she performed here a long time ago, she understood that a happy old age was possible here: three full meals a day, with menus approved by gerontologists, free and immediate medical assistance, occasional trips to the “outer world,” to concerts and performances. However, the Veterans’ Home administration has imposed a strict requirement that all tenants be neatly dressed when they are outside or during meals. Yet despite their respectable age, this is not difficult at all for these former actors, who simply don’t see how it could be otherwise. For example, Yevheniya Yakubovych says that she regularly uses face masques, and she considers it bad manners to appear in public without makeup or jewelry.
Indeed, good spirits and vitality are what makes the veterans in this home different from inmates of similar institutions. The retired actors understand that they got lucky. Twenty-eight rooms and beds in their home are obviously not enough to house all retired actors. Some say that their former colleagues, unable to survive on a pension, resort to busking for money, mostly in underpasses. After all, long gone are the houses and clubs of culture that need a professional instructor for amateur theatricals.
Yet even the Veterans’ Home is struggling to survive. While the home is state-subsidized, and most of the retired actors’ pensions go to the home fund, the administration admits there is enough money only for food, clothing, and medication. So even a burned-out light bulb can lead to a budget shortfall, let alone major breakdowns, fuel costs, and emergencies. As for support that the Veterans’ Home receives from people of good will, only young people of one religious community provide regular assistance. Their visits are real holidays for the veterans. They go for walks in the park, read books aloud, and tell jokes. Halyna Ratmyrova, a former actress at the Uzhhorod Drama Theater, said happily that two couples among their young helpmates have already tied the knot. As soon as she spotted the courting couples, she knew they were bound for the altar.
It is not true that the pensioners suffer from a lack of attention here. For example, Halyna Ratmyrova’s former colleagues visit her all the time. “After all, I spent fifty years and eight months onstage,” she said with a smile. Perhaps this is why she still dreams of the theater. Meanwhile, she can go on endlessly telling stories, like the one about bursting into laughter during a serious monolog or accidentally prompting an actor into saying wrong lines onstage. Yet her best memories date from the war and postwar period, when she was staging performances as part of a front-line brigade.
The oldest tenant of the Veterans’ Home, 101-year-old Anton Shtepa, also likes to reminisce. Without glasses he reads aloud the most brilliant phrases from the book A Luckless Lucky Man. Of course, this book is about him, the meritorious master of folk art. Yet he complains that the book does not include his own recipe for longevity, which is quite simple: life on the land and a favorite pastime. Over the years Anton has had many hobbies. Woodcarving is his all-time favorite. Representing the apogee of his creative quest were compositions based on folk motifs and works by Ukrainian classics. Before this he carved musical instruments, which earned him the nickname of the Stradivarius of Chernihiv for the sound produced by his violins — tobacco pipes, shelves, and kitchen utensils. Everything began with a wooden scooter that he crafted at the age of nine, for which he received a sound beating from his father, who thought that his son’s business was to tend herds and not ride scooters.
Still and all, Anton Shtepa is not that proud of his compositions. He mentions his icon at a Belgian church, where worshippers pray for his health to this very day. His pride and joy is a steam machine, which he promised to his father at age twelve. Now the steam machine is in his room in the Veterans’ Home. Anton plans to hold a public display of his works. At 101 he is also thinking of joining the ranks of the Ukrainian Cossacks.
