Lya Miki Nool / Millar

By Ingrid Millar ingridmillar (at) tiscali.co.uk

My lovely Estonian mum was Lya Miki Nool, born Tartu on February 8, 1928.

Her father, Paul Eduard Nool, was one of the Estonian Army lives lost in 1944. How? Where? I just don’t know.

Her Swedish mother, Ella Nool, was dispatched to one of the Siberian work-camps. How? Where? I don’t know this either. How did she live? How did she die? So many unanswered questions.

I never knew my grandparents. So I’d be very grateful if anyone knows anything about the Nool family from Tartu. Or even where I can start my search.

Mum told me her father was a dentist in the army. Her mother, a doctor. Her maternal grandfather had been given land in Estonia, as a reward for some outstanding heroism in the First World War. I presume this was the land on which the family farm stood. But this is all the knowledge I have of Mum’s family.

Before they were killed, my grandparents had the foresight to send their only child to a place of relative safety – her own grandparents’ farm, outside Tartu. Of this farm, and her grandparents, I know nothing. I presume they too, perished in the war. What happened to their farm?

Mum, an orphaned only child, became a ‘Displaced Person’. (There was a baby brother, she told me once, but he died shortly after he was born. Mum had an abiding memory of her own mother, lying in bed after the loss of this baby. ‘Her face,’ Mum said, ‘as white as the sheet she lay on.’)

Whichever way you cut it, that’s an awful lot of pain for a young child.

Mum never saw it like that. She accepted what life threw at her. She saw it all as a challenge to be met. With fortitude, generosity and good grace.

She made a success of her life.

As a nurse (she was 15!), she ‘escaped’ (her word) to Germany with wounded German troops. My Estonian godmother, Erika Peggie, and two young doctors, my ‘Auntie’ Ino and ‘Auntie’ Taisi, took her under their wing. Taisi, I believe, went to Washington, USA where she practised medicine until she died. (When?)

In 1946, Mum came to Britain, where she married my dad, Duncan Millar, in 1948. They were happily married for 57 years.

Mum worked tirelessly as a nurse until two weeks before she died suddenly in November 2005. I took her out of hospital, took her home and nursed her myself, using – I hope – the sort of loving nursing care she had taught me herself.

It was an honour and it broke my heart when she breathed her last breath. She was so much loved.

When I and my two little brothers were young, Mum did attend some annual Estonian re-unions, held in England, over the years. If anyone knows Mum from these meetings, I would love to hear from you.

With my dad, she returned to Estonia in 1999. Visiting Tartu was hard for her, Dad later told me. Nothing remained of the town she knew as a child. Her old home was gone, her school was gone. All bombed and rebuilt.

I went with Mum to Tallinn in 1999. The minute Mum got on the plane, she started talking in fluent Estonian. That was a revelation to me. Mum had adopted the English (Scottish!)language like a native speaker as soon as she’d arrived in the UK in 1947, and spoke only to us in English.

Until that trip, the only memory I have of ever hearing her native tongue were the nursery rhymes she sang to me when I was a baby.

Our trip to Tallin was memorable and wonderful. It was autumn and I’d never seen a land so beautiful. We walked, talked, ate, drank and laughed. It was while walking, arm-in-arm through the town’s central park, that the sole came away from her right shoe. (Cheap shoes, Ma – false economy!) She took off her other shoe, I took off mine, and we walked back to our hotel, kicking up the autumn leaves and laughing till tears ran down our faces.

To have shared those wonderful few days with Mum in her homeland is something that will stay with me forever.

I am so proud of our Estonian heritage, the struggle and sacrifice made by so many. I now have four beautiful grand-daughters and want them to understand and embrace their heritage, too.

I am just beginning to research into Mum’s background. Any pointers gratefully received.

Many thanks, Ingrid.