Goodbye, Kostya—I'm Sorry

On October 5, 13 years ago, I saw my father for the last time. He lived, mostly, alone in the Irish city of Drogheda, and I was visiting to take him shopping for groceries, before bringing him a takeaway supper, and watching a rugby game together. He asked me to stay over, but I, too caught up in a collapsing personal relationship, wanted to flee back to Dublin and wallow in misery. The final hug he gave me was tighter, more intense. On the drive back to the city I stopped at the ‘new’ bridge across the river Boyne.

Sitting looking at the glowing blue structure, I had that sick, burning feeling in my stomach that I’ve only gotten a few times in my life before major events happened. I wanted to go back. Just turn the car around, pull up at his cottage, hug him tightly, and say “Let’s stick on the kettle for some tea.” I didn’t, and I’ve regretted it ever since. And the ‘anniversary’ this week gave me pause for thought and reflection on the story of a former student of mine from Moscow.

THE BRIDGE

Kostya was an interesting, funny young man with terrible English and taste in clothes. I spoke with him and his parents in summer 2018 at our admissions office when I was a college director. Coincidentally, the day he was there, we were giving gifts to the former Irish diplomat Arthur Hendrick, who had been so superb in growing Brand Ireland in Russia.

Kostya’s mother was so impressed that a humble Irish college had a foreign diplomat, and one from Western Europe too, that she insisted upon her youngest boy joining our ranks. They’d been at an open-door day earlier in the year and liked “our vibe”; now he was choosing a scholarship place with us rather than far more prestigious universities in the capital.

When I left to head up the university’s international office the following November, Kostya visited my office with a gift. When he graduated in 2020, he visited me at my new university post and told me he was “going abroad.”

“You remember saying me about cross bridges when we come to them, I am doing it now,” he smiled. That related to a morning I saw him in the college and invited him into my office for a chat. I advised him to dress better and work on his English, because his dream was to study in Oxford. That our college had a link with an A-level college in the English city was a main reason he joined us.

“I crossed the bridge,” he said, pointing to clothes that were significantly better-fitting than in summer 2018, “and I got C1 [English proficiency].”

THE ROAD

In July 2021, Kostya flew back to Moscow having completed a prep year in Oxford and was keen to tell me how his first year in the UK had gone.

“I love it. The dreamy spires, people, all is so, so amazing,” he told me in a coffee shop not far from my office. His parents, both middle managers in state-run firms, were thankful that the three older siblings were chipping in to pay the costs. I asked if he had found time to work.

“I did, you remember, in Christmas. But I don’t do anything crazy, just study, sleep, study.”

His efforts paid off; he was offered a place at Mansfield College, but turned it down in favour of a full academic scholarship at University College London (UCL).

I didn’t see him before he returned to the UK and didn’t make the effort to stay in touch too closely. However, he came home for Christmas later that year, and I met him during the January 2022 holidays in Moscow. His father, who had suffered badly with Covid-19, was poorly, and Kostya debated whether he should go back to the UK.

“At New Year [Eve] we had to call the ambulance. Mister Alan, should I stay?”

We were, at that moment, in a McDonald’s near where I lived and the question caught me off guard. As a parent, I wanted to answer in a way a parent should – “You need to follow your path, that’s what I want for you.” As a son, I had a very different answer in my head.

“This is something you need to discuss with your folks,” I began, but he asked for my opinion: what would I do in his shoes? I told him my story from October 2013. He nodded, said he’d think it over. I reminded him that there were multiple flights daily between the UK and Moscow, so he was never more than a few hours away. He nodded, thanked me and left.

THE END

Kostya’s father passed away in August 2022. He was there, in the hospital, to hold his hand. I attended the funeral; he hugged me and thanked me for advising him to stay. I didn’t, I sincerely didn’t. Or I think I told my own story with a bit too much emotion. His mother asked me to speak with him to help him get back to the UK to study. We all knew there was no chance.

“Mama, stop, you know Mister Alan was right that I stay,” he said at the small reception at a restaurant close to the cemetery. I wanted to scream at them and say, “I didn’t!”

“Lucky I did, because those planes don’t go both ways now,” he pushed, making my position at the table untenable, so I left.

Last month, as I sat in an Indian restaurant in Vilnius, Lithuania, I got a message from his mother. Her boy had been killed in a Ukrainian attack. Kostya graduated with a degree from the MES (Ministry of Emergency Services) in June and died from injuries dealing with a fire.

RETURNING TO THE BRIDGE

Dear reader, please don’t think I’m beating myself up. It’s worse than that. While I accept that he made his final decision himself, I know Kostya looked to me for guidance, and I let my own regret betray me.

I thought of my own kids after hearing of his untimely passing. Would I be so selfish as to want them to sit by me and wait for my passing? I got amazing solace from a former boss, who told me that he wasn’t there when his own father died, in Bosnia, yet he believed his father knew how much he loved him and that I should understand that.

The words of a wise parish priest in San Silvestro in Capite in Rome came to me. That was the basilica in the Eternal City where my parents had wed, in 1973, and which I visited on a work trip this February. I saw the register, where they signed up to become Mister and Missus Moore. Following this, I attended a Mass said in my parents’ honour and afterwards sat with Father Rory, who explained the difference between being sad and morose.

Being morose was an affliction, one self-sought and self-destructing. Being sad was being close to tears at the memory of a loved one, or a lost moment, or a pain from the past or present. Being sad was something passing and to be removed.

In the Irish language, we say “sadness is upon me,” not “I am sad.” Being sad is a characteristic; sadness is something we feel and pass out from under. It is not a permanent state or something to battle, like depression or physical pain. We choose it. For 13 years I chose to be morose and regretful of my decision to continue on down the road. It’s something I have pledged to myself to lift from me, though the guilt at putting Kostya on his road will linger with me.