Kristina Syrchikova documentary photographer

Funeral dress

This elderly woman had been carrying cancer for several years.
After some courses of chemotherapy she tried alternative treatment. For example, she visited a witch doctor.
After the first Holy Communion.
After the chemotherapy her hair was dropping out. To hide this she was wearing hats and headscarfs.
Because of the drug allergy the woman was suffering the temperature about 38 degrees during several months.
The doctors refused to search for the allergen, excusing it by her age.
Being desperate, the woman decided to sew the funeral dress herself.
She didn’t celebrate her last birthday: just baked some apples.
The woman lived alone, sometimes her relatives visited her.
One day there came the moment when the woman couldn’t walk without help.
Sometimes she had to wait in a queue for hours to get a doctor’s consultation.
Most doctors told the woman that her condition was getting worse because of her age
and didn't pay any attention to the symptoms she recently got.
The suffering woman died two hours after being discharged from hospital.
A coffin in a porch.
Some doctors after having discovered her having cancer, refused to see her with various excuses for that.
The funeral.
A filled with water basin and a towel, left by the relatives at the dead woman’s home.
A handkerchief, given by the relatives to remember the woman.
A note from the woman’s archive.
The inscription says: “Let God judge you, Leave mine to me, Take yours with you”.

This project is about an elderly woman from Russia affected by cancer. For several years she had been struggling her disease. She received treatment in hospitals, got several courses of chemotherapy, went to church, visited witchdoctors, used folk cures. She tried everything and believed in her recovery.

But then came the moment when she gave up stopped believing. She sewed herself a funeral dress.

Doctors were giving up on her more and more often, redirecting her from one hospital to another. Most of them told her it was all because of senility, ignoring the fact that some symptoms revealed a week or a month ago. Doctors also refused to heal the woman, when they discovered her having cancer, refused to see her with various excuses for that.

She visited plenty of hospitals, almost lived in them, no one wanted to help her. She spent a week in the last hospital, couldn’t walk at all. She was discharged from the hospital and died two hours ago at home, surrounded by relatives.