This is a portrait of Evdokia Buryakova, my Grandma’s mother.

My Grandma told me a lot about her. She was fifteen years old when she was married for the first time. She was sixteen when her first husband died of tuberculosis. Her second husband, whom she married the same year, at sixteen, was twenty years older than her. Grandmother said she was afraid of him and never loved him. She had eleven children with him. Four of them died very young — due to various illnesses. Later, one of her sons died in the Great Patriotic War, and another son was taken prisoner in Germany’s concentration camp. As he returned to his homeland, he was sent in transit to Siberia — he wasn’t even allowed to see his family.

I often think how strong this woman must have been — so soft, kind in appearance — to survive all this.

As soon as my Grandma got an apartment, she moved her mother, Grandmother Evdokia, to Moscow. This amazing woman helped raise my mom. Grandma loved her mom very much and said she went gray in one week when her mom died.

This portrait was commissioned by my Grandma for a monument on the grave, but never delivered — I found it in one of the boxes of papers.

The medallion is lying on a patchwork quilt — one of the quilts sewn by hand by my Grandma’s mother.