We Know The Ache

We are all familiar with the searching and the longing. All of us.

“Mary in Rocker,” William Schickel

The Revolution’s new ideologies left Olga Alliluyeva, Joseph Stalin’s mother-in-law, hollow and cold. The regime insisted they were freeing the masses from superstition and religion. Enlightened humans didn’t need God anymore. But weathered Olga knew something different; she felt the fire fading. The ancient stirring called to her, and Olga returned to her Orthodox faith.

Stalin and the other adults in the family were bemused by her simpleton ways. They allowed a decrepit old woman in her dying years the quaint comfort of her naive ideas and fairy tales. But the grandchildren mocked her. “Tell us, Babushka? Where is your soul? Show us where your soul is.”

Once, Olga answered quietly: “I can’t show you your soul, but you will know it when it aches.”