My Godmother, Bara

Last night I learned my godmother, Bara Bachmura, passed away in Bloomington, Indiana.  She was 96 years old.

She was a bit of a recluse and an artist whose husband had passed away well before I met her back in 1995.  He had been a professor at IU and they lived in a lovely home designed by a local architect known for his unique use of windows.  The hallways were lined with bookshelves full of books and she rented a few rooms to university students to make ends meet.

The large living room was used as an art studio with tables, easels, and cabinets filled with and covered by art supplies and painter’s paraphernalia.  She had taken up icon painting in her latter years and there was evidence of them as photographs clipped up in clumps to provide examples and types to paint from.  The two main icons on the iconostasis of the local Orthodox Church where I was a catechumen at the time were painted by Bara.  I remember the moment she showed them to me in that living room in a nearly finished state and we discussed their various elements as I excitedly asked her questions.  It was probably her being an artist that drew me to her.  

In retrospect, the connection makes sense as my dear friend Kevin McCarty was also an artist and I’d hung out with him in his studio apartment in Marion, Indiana on many an occasion.  The “studio” part of his apartment was in fact a studio with paint and oil staining the beat up hard wood floors and partially finished canvas’s hanging on the walls and stacked all around the room.  He had two full mattresses standing on end in the corner behind the front door that were lowered into the middle of the room for sleeping when needed.  I was not an artist but something Kevin said back then has always stuck with me.  “Aaron, you have the eye of an artist.”  I don’t know why that meant so much to me, but it struck something deep inside that I had not been aware of until that moment.  It is like a precious jewel that I keep tucked away in my memory and pull out from time to time to contemplate, especially now that Kevin has passed away.

Visiting Bara and sitting on her enclosed back porch was a time apart.  I was new to the Faith and hungry for knowledge.  We spent most of the time talking about spiritual stuff of the Orthodox variety.  I guess that is appropriate considering she had agreed to be my godmother in ‘95 and stood with me at All Saints in the ceremony to make it official during Pascha of ‘96.  

Between my first and second years of medical school I had the summer off and ended up using the time to visit a friend in Russia and stayed with him on the outskirts of Moscow.  Upon my return I was full of stories of visits to various churches and monasteries from Sergiev-Posad to Moscow, St. Petersburg, Pechory, and even up to the isolated island of Valaam with its ancient monastery that is nearly a thousand years old.  

She was particularly interested in my visit to the relics of St. Xenia of St. Petersburg which lie in a small blue chapel at the heart of a cemetery there.  She knew the details of her life and had a lot of appreciation for her and her struggles.  St. Xenia had lost her husband and became a bit of an eccentric which I am sure Bara could relate to.  In the Orthodox Church she was a kind of saint known as a “Fool for Christ.”  Intriguingly, this was how Bishop Paul described Kevin at his funeral years later.  In the intervening time Kevin had come into the Orthodox Church and chosen me as his godfather.  This made it a spiritual family of eccentric artists running through me as a sort of nexus.

So there we sat on her back porch after my return from Russia and I presented her with a vial of oil from a lampada hanging at St. Xenia’s relics.  In pious tradition this is considered holy oil that can be used to anoint the sick and suffering for healing.  Bara was really taken aback by this unexpected gift and though she was not one to smile much, she was beaming.  Soon thereafter she was clearing weeds and trimming bushes in her yard when she inadvertently stepped into a sharp broken branch on a bush that punctured a hole in her leg to the bone.  She went to the doctor but over time it was not healing adequately and some osteomyelitis began to set in to the point she was told they may need to amputate.  She was extremely upset and in her gruff way she told the doctor she would die before letting anyone cut her leg off.  I don’t remember if I mentioned it or if she herself remembered she had the oil from St. Xenia.  She applied it to the wound and the next time I saw her at church she told me the wound had completely healed.  She was adamant that the oil and St. Xenia’s prayers had been instrumental in her healing.

A lot of time has gone by since I last saw her at All Saints.  I would get occasional stories from my parents who subsequently converted and became parishioners there.  They would talk with her at coffee hour after the Liturgy on the rare occasions she could make it.  I did not know her well, but well enough to know that I am indebted to her decision to take on the role of being my godmother all those years ago.  May her memory be eternal.

  Bachmura 1980

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