This is our wedding ceremony in the marriage registration office. We decided to register our marriage after 11 years of living together. The head of the marriage registration office conducted the ceremony. She is handing our marriage certificate to us. My husband Eduard-Anatoliy Khanson is next to me . My cousin Babi Firk (nee Kljass-Glass) is standing by the table, to her right is my cousin Irene Fallstein (nee Kljass), the daughter of father's brother Bernhard. My brother David is standing to the right behind. To the left is Eduard, the son of my cousin Reni. Reni is sitting to her left between my husband and me. The picture was taken in Tallinn in 1972.
I had known my husband for a long time before we got married. Anatoliy-Eduard Khanson was a ballet dancer, a soloist of the theater ‘Estonia.’ I played there sometimes. I liked him a lot. He was a very handsome man. I was looking at my future husband and envied his wife. Their marriage did not last long. Their daughter was born, Anatoliy-Eduard’s wife fell in love with another man, also a ballet dancer, and they divorced. Then my husband-to-be came to me right away. It happened in 1957. We were together till his death.
Anatoliy-Eduard Khanson was born in Tartu in 1924. His father was Estonian and his mother Russian. That is why he has a double name: Russian and Estonian. My husband said that his father was very handsome. Judging by the pictures, my husband took after his father. He barely remembered his father as he died when Anatoliy-Eduard was a child. He had TB and he died before the age of 30. My husband was raised by his mother.
We lived together for many happy years. My husband was nice, smart and kind. Apart from ballet he loved music and literature. He knew history very well and was keen on it.
I lived with my mother and my husband with his mother. My mother-in-law was old and sick, so my husband could not leave her. He constantly needed help. It was hard for my mother to live by herself and take care of things. First we thought that our mothers could live together and we could help them, but it turned out to be impossible: each of them was used to her own orders. Thus my husband and I used to run from one apartment to another. When his mother died, he moved in with us. My mother loved him a lot and they became good friends. My husband was a very kind man. At times he was even too kind!
We had already lived together for eleven years, and only in 1972 we decided to get our marriage registered. We did it when Mother was still alive. Shortly afterward, in 1972 my mother died.
