Xenia Maximovna Melnik

Xenia Maximovna Melnik, 68, of Detroit, Michigan passed away peacefully at home on January 23, 2025 after a courageous battle with cancer. She was born in Detroit, Michigan on December 9, 1956 to Maxim and Sonya Melnik.
Xenia, had a heart of gold. There are very few people indeed who literally put others interests above their own. Xenia not only did that, she did it for one and all, and always. She loved everybody. And I mean everybody, especially children. She was aunt or grandmother to so many of her friends from the Recovery Community, who loved bringing their young ones to her, so they can learn from Aunt Xenia how to become an artist. And a born artist she was.
Her father Maxim Petrovic Melnik, a renowned surgeon, who pioneered many surgical techniques, and mother Sonya Melnik, a loving mother to seven children, had Xenia on December 9 1956. They christened her Xenia, but it was Cindy, the name given by her oldest sister, Sandra, that everyone came to know her by n the neighborhood of Palmer Parks and in Country Day, where she was among the first batch of girls to be admitted, and later at the exclusive University of Liggett in Grosse Pointe. Cindy loved life, and lived to please everybody and was a go-getter par excellence, never able to say no, no matter how difficult the task. It was very hard for her to reclaim her original name Xenia, lest it may disappoint those who loved her as Cindy, but eventually she decided that she will forge an identity of her own, which would be unique, and such was the power of her personality that in no time everyone forgot Cindy and henceforth knew her as Xenia or simply X.
X had not just a heart of gold but an equally sparkling intellect. She would have made a surgeon as renowned as her father. She knew the pictures in his surgical textbooks like the palm of her hand. But at the age of 16, when asked to dissect a frog, she was so horrified by actually cutting open its body and seeing the raw flesh and blood that she ran out of the class and never looked back towards a career in medicine. Instead her talent pivoted to appreciate the beauty of the human form and mother nature and she blossomed into a graphic artist, an infographist, and a ceramicist.
In search of adventures and new vistas in art she moved to Boston after high school but quickly became homesick and suffered from her first bout of depression. She came home and entered into treatment with Dr. K. C.
Nair, who had a profound influence upon her life, and she developed a love for helping folks with emotional difficulties. She worked as an art therapist at Northville Regional Hospital and Kingswood Hospital for many years.
I came to know Xenia while both of us worked in the Mental Health Field. Nobody would put one's whole soul into helping another as Xenia did with the patients under her care. Her exceptionality led to her getting drawn into my family, where she and my mother, Professor Kamala Jain, who, along with my brother, Anil Jain and my sister Indira Hall, embraced her as family. Xenia and our family's life remained entwined ever since, and even on the last day on this earth she and I talked about how she is going to beat her cancer eventually. My wife, Jayshee and Xenia were the best of friends and we met at least twice a week for well over three decades. Xenia was like a second mother to my son, Valmik, seeing her grow from a tiny tot to an assistant Prosecutor at Wayne County, delighting in his every success.
Leaving the Mental Health Field as it became mechanistic and her deep empathizing with her patients leading to conflict with bureaucrats, she turned to teaching children at underprivileged schools art, encouraging them to seek emotional expression through creativity instead of waywardness. She was loved by her students.
Xenia had a very special relationship with people struggling to be sober and she is already missed yet celebrated by the Grosse Pointe recovery community where she was an active and contributing member. Xenia was viewed as a delightful, sharp and witty friend who, through recovery, grew to be a happy, joyous and free spirit, overcoming the inhibiting aspects of the challenges of life.
Xenia is preceded in death by her father Maxim, her mother Sonya, her sisters Tammy and Kathy, and her brothers Greg and Peter. She is survived by her sister Sandra (John); her brother Igor; her nephews Scott (Karen), Max (Anne), and Michael; and nieces April (Lyle), Kim, and Yvonne.
Funeral services will take place on Saturday, February 1st at Christ Church Detroit, 960 E. Jefferson, Detroit. Visitation at the church will begin at 10am until the time of the funeral service at 12 Noon. Immediately following the funeral, the church will host a wake beginning at 1pm. To send flowers to the church for the day of the funeral, please contact: Linda Batzloff, (248) 474-4726
Burial services will be announced at a later time.