From Being a Mentee to a Mentor
My grandfather, Viktor, was a role model for me. He was grown up in a rich high status family household in Russia, where all my family was originally from before they moved to the United States in the 90s. I would call him dedushka, which meant grandfather in russian. My dedushka’s father was the right hand man to Czar Nicholas II. After the Czar lost power his father was sent to Uzbekistan. Since his father was a great soldier and general, the communists him in World War II. He died in the war to a gunshot to the heart. My dedushka was only 14 when it happened.
My dedushka has 5 siblings and now a widowed mother. He decided to leave high school and right away start trading school, to get a quick job to help his mom with paying for things. After two-three years she got really mad with him, because he didn’t go to college and get a degree. Eventually, he agreed with her and he went from a community college to the “harvard” of Russian colleges. He met my grandmother there and got his Phd in physics. My dedushka was a very successful physicist. My dedushka had over fifty patents in the United States and over twenty back in Russia. My dedushka was a role model.
My dedushka taught me everything I know. He taught me manners, chivalry, how to be proper with someone depending on their status. I would play chess with him in the park with other old people. He would also always take me to the park with my cousins and we would all play with each other. When I was little, I would sometime play vigorous with my older cousin. He taught me to always be nice, because things always come around, good or bad. Since then I always wanted to treat people with the ultimate respect, no matter what the situation will be. Since he was an expert in mathematics and sciences, he would also teach me these subjects and even sometimes helped me write up english essays, since he always had to write up research papers. My dedushka was the most influential person in my life, and I always wanted to be successful like him, until the tragedy.
My dedushka was a very stressful man. He worked 10 hour shifts, and would continue to work till twelve-to-one am, every night. He would even spend an hour to two at the gym every-other-day. He was a very persistent do-getter, but his body couldn’t take the stress and pain he was doing to himself. My dedushka sadly had an aortic dissection at the age of sixty-eight. An aortic dissection is when the aorta, the huge vein connecting to your heart, is torn off. This caused him to lose a lot of his memory, since there was no blood flow going to his brain.
He is thankfully still living, but it took him three years to get back to somewhat normal. He was in a coma at the hospital for six weeks. When he woke up, he was still in the hospital for another 6 weeks, because he lost half his memory from the loss of oxygen and blood going to his brain when his aorta tore off. When he started getting most of his memory back, he moved to the rehab center for another two-and-half years. I never was more sad and depressed in my life when I heard the news and saw him bedside at the hospital. I didn’t know how my younger brother would react to this news. Will he ever have the same role model I had and be taught the lessons I learned from him. Will my brother be same or will he different?
My parents were never really around during the time by grandfather was in the hospital and rehab center. Everyday, they would be at the hospital helping my dedushka in any way they could. I didn’t mind, but it left me with a huge task. My brother, Ben, was only seven years old when this happened. This is a very important age, because he is starting to learn how to study and getting the basic math and english. No one was really around during this process, so I had to take it in my own hands and help him out. I tried to teach him like my grandfather did. It was hard to try to balance everything at a young age of fourteen. Everything fell onto my lap out of nowhere and it was my first year of high school too.
I had to balance time for my homework and studying with my brothers, doing laundry, and washing the dishes. I used to only worry about my needs and necessities, but now my brother’s too and it dropped out of nowhere. I had teach him how to write sentences properly, do simple addition and subtraction and other things like that. I helped my brother with how to start a sentence and memorize words for his spelling quizzes. Ben had a lot of trouble with the past and present words, so I came in to help him with that. too. My brother now looks at me like his role model and does a lot of the things I always liked to do. I guess I know now how it feels to feel an adult and a role model for someone.
Going from being taught by a mentor, grandfather, dedushka, and best friend to the one being the mentor for my brother was huge. I always for him to learn from my mistakes, like me never wanting to read to him wanting to read over watching T.V. and playing video games. He is like my little prodigy, like I was of my dedushka. I learned a lot from my dedushka. He made me the man I am today, and I am grateful for him. I hope I was the same for my brother. I just want my brother to do better than me. I screwed up a lot in highschool and don’t want him to make the same mistakes as I did.
