My step-mother Vermelena

Vermelena Mihailovna Kozlovskaya or for me just "aunt Vermelena" was wonderfull and well educated lady with deep love to people, books, and to everything that makes life and people better. She was always ready to help all of us and not only in my family but everybody around. I remember her since I was 7 years old.

Vermelena and my father met each other in the lab of a so-called "post box" research and manufacturing facility where both worked for the Russian Government in secrecy. The time passed and they became boyfriend and girlfriend. Vermelena received PHD and moved to another job but they have never broke out and even the death of my dad did not stop them being together. I called Vermelena a long time after dad passed and she continues to stay with him in her memory.

She was born in Nijniy Novgorod and was younger than my father by almost sixteen years but I have never felt this difference. She was intelectual and very modest one. She loved my dad so much that this love made him even better. He read what she read, he watched what she watched. They attended the same plays, concerts, and exhibitions. Friends of my father became her friends. They traveled together. They found new friends in those small adventures and those friends were the best of people I ever knew. But Vermelena and dad lived in different flats. Dad stayed with me and my granny in an apartment close to Silver Forest - part of Moscow near a remote tram end-station. Far from it in the center of the Russian capital, near Three Train Stations Square was Vermelena apartment. To shorten this distance they frequently visited each other and we called it sleep over.

Time passed, I moved to another country, my dad died, and Vermelena passed in a year or two after him. But, in my memory Vermelena and Dad continue to live in their apartments with a one hour travel span they couldn't make less.