text of kin

This is the Paris grave of the magnificent Tartar dancer Rudolf Nureyev, designed as one of the Tartar a.k.a Azerbaijani carpets he collected.  It is in the Russian cemetery, surrounded by the tsarist nobility who got out of  St. Petersburg and MOCKBA c.1917 as the philistine hordes were trashing their treasures. I am buried deep into revolutionary Russia lately, tracing the family of my dear and cultured friend Ariadna*Vladimirovna - and patronymics now have meaning for me. Her second name tells us her father was Vladimir. Actually pre-1917 he was Woldemar Hesse, but Russia loves change. When a Russian maiden married, her surname became her husband's but with 'a' added. Vladimir Davydov's wife would be Natalya Davydova, meaning she is one of them, Davydova also meaning the entire family.
Added to the shifting sea of people's names, post-noble Russia changed all the place names as well, ie: St. Petersburg became Leningrad., and the Bolshie hordes trashed all the noble graves as well. As one website wailed 'the miracle of Russian genealogy, is that it can be done at all'.
My obsession with genealogy (anybody's) may be the result of never really being a part of my own family. I was a satellite of their orbit right from the start.
Just looking for a link to explain the dissociative disorder I definitely have, I found the founder, and do please just shriek at what he considered to be 'a trauma':
"By the late 19th century there was a general acceptance that emotionally traumatic experiences could cause long-term disorders which might display a variety of symptoms. These conversion disorders were found to occur in even the most resilient individuals, but with profound effect in someone with emotional instability like Louis Vivé (b.1863) who suffered a traumatic experience as a 13-year-old when he encountered a viper." 
A viper? Amateur hour Louis, pull yourself together. My viper was a rattlesnake in long grass doing the full rattle. Brushed that off without a sweat. My traumas have all been as 'pure Sandoz' was to any old LSD.

The person to whom I am the next of kin, just loved the open road - well Eastlink and the tollways anyhow.  Aged 90 years and with four speed fines and a collision in the past 2 years, that I know about, his licence to drive has been taken from him, and with it, his will to continue.
Today while wading through the admin of it all (and that will be another post, get your notebooks ready) I discovered this appropriate vehicle for travel to farthest horizons:

My fellow mourners of the smelly, randy legend that was Nureyev would understand.

My next of kin is blissfully and intensively medicated, receiving those who care for him, and I pray he lasts until tomorrow at least, because today is the 7th anniversary of the brutal murder of my sweet Puppy, a six kilo Shih Tzu ripped apart in our own driveway by a bikie's 120 kg English Mastiff, escaped from guarding the meth lab across the road. I know what grief is, and so does everybody who lived in that street that day.
Until I decided to include Puppy, my first thought for this post title was Good grief Charlie Brown.
Here is the Pupster guarding Kitty when she was only months old