Ukraine, Mikrich (AP) —This was not the place where Nadiya Torbuchaninova thought she was hitchhiking from her village every day at the age of 70. Shattered Ukrainian Bucha town, I’m about to take the body of her son home for burial.
The question is that she wears her, and like winter coats and boots, she still wears against the cold. Why did Vadim, 48, go to Bucha, where the Russians are far more severe than those occupying their village? Who shot him while driving on Yabrunska Street, where so many bodies were found? And why did she lose her son just one day before the Russians withdrew?
After receiving news to her that Vadim was found and buried by a stranger in Bucha’s garden, she spent more than a week trying to take him back to the proper tomb. But he was only one in hundreds and was part of an investigation into war crimes of increasing importance worldwide.
Trubchaninova is one of many older people who have been left behind or have opted to stay because millions of Ukrainians have fled across national borders or to other parts of the country. They were first seen on an empty street after Russian troops withdrew from the community around the capital Kieu, peeking through wooden gates and taking donated food bags back to frozen homes. ..
Like Trubchaninova, it turns out that only surviving the first few weeks of the war took the children.
She last met her son on March 30th. She thought he was taking a walk as part of a long recovery from her stroke. “It would be strange to go further,” she said. She wondered if he went driving to look for her cell phone connection to call her own son and say happy birthday to him.
She wondered if Vadim thinks the Russians in Bucha are like the people occupying their village.
More than a week later, she found a makeshift grave in between with the help of a stranger of the same name and age as her son. The next day, she found a body bag containing Vadim in the Bucha Cemetery. He always stood out in his height, with his feet sticking out of the holes in the corners. Longing not to lose him, she found her scarf and tied it there. It was her landmark.
She believed she knew where her son’s body was held for days on a fridge truck outside the morgue of Bucha. She was desperate to find an official to expedite the process of inspecting her son and issuing the necessary documents to release him.
“I’m worried about where he’s going and if I can find him,” she said.
If she collects his body, she will need a casket of about $ 90, which is equivalent to her pension month. She, like other older Ukrainians, has not received a pension since the beginning of the war. She sold the vegetables she grew and got them, but the potatoes she was trying to plant in March died while hiding in her house.
Her aging cell phone continues to lose battery life. She has forgotten her own phone number. Her other son, two years younger than Vadim, is unemployed and in trouble. It’s never easy.
“I found it very difficult to be here, so I went out of this place,” said the determined Torbuchaninova, sitting at home under his 32-year-old colored black-and-white photo. I did.
She remembered watching her television when it was still functioning, as the broadcast showed so many Ukrainians fleeing early in the war. She was worried about them. Where are they going? Where do they sleep? What do they eat? How do they reshape their lives?
“I feel very sorry for them,” she said. “And now I’m in that situation. I’m lost inside. I don’t even know how to explain how much I’ve lost. Whether to put my head on this pillow tonight and wake up tomorrow I don’t even know. “
Like many older Ukrainians, she decided to work for herself in less time and give her children a better life and education than herself.
“That was my plan,” she said with excitement. “What plan do you want me to make now? How can I make a new plan if one of my sons is lying in Bucha?”
On Thursday, she waited again outside Bucha’s morgue. After another long day without progress, she sat on a bench in the sun. “I just wanted to sit on a nice day,” she said. “I’m going home. I’ll be back tomorrow.”
The other side of the town that day was the kind of closure that Trubchaninova had terribly wanted. At the graveyard, two 82-year-old women stood up from the bench and crossed when the now familiar white van arrived with another casket.
Women Neo Nila and Helena sing at the funeral. They played at 10 o’clock since the Russians withdrew. “The biggest pain for her mother is the loss of her son,” Neonyla said. “There is no word to explain it.”
They joined the priest at the foot of the tomb. Two men with a handful of tulips and a man with a hat attended. “That’s it,” said the tomb digger when the exhausted-looking monk was over.
Another man with a gold ink pen wrote the basic details on a temporary cross. He was for a woman who was killed in a bombardment while cooking outside. She was 69 years old.
A line of empty tombs was waiting.
Finally, on Saturday, Trubchaninova reunited with her son. Under a cast iron sky, she grabbed a donated casket in a small graveyard in a village field. She knelt and cried. And Vadym was buried.
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