"He is the best boy in the world. I want to raise him to be a good person. I want him to be happy," says Oleksandr, the father of ten-year-old Dmytro. The man has been raising his son alone since he was born...
“She dreamed of having a child so much, but she was destined to be a mother for only seven days...”
Oleksandr is 43 years old. He lives in Chernihiv. He was born in this city, graduated from high school and received a vocational education. Here he met his soul mate. He met his fate...
What is fate? People say: you can't ride a horse around it and you can't ford it. He studied with Liudmyla together, saw her between lectures and seminars, but he never dared to approach the girl he really liked. She did it later, when they were working at the same company. «She approached me about a work issue. But we got to talking and realized that we didn't want to part for a long time... We started to develop a friendship that grew into love. We started dating, and after a while we started a family», Oleksandr says.
....Behind the glass of the wardrobe in the living room of their apartment in Chernihiv, where we are talking, there are beautiful wedding photos. “It was a beautiful wedding,” Oleksandr catches my eye. "All our memories with Lyuda are happy ones. We lived together, we didn't quarrel. Lyuda was smart and very kind. She was sensible. She loved and knew how to cook. But she was very modest, not talkative. She always kept everything to herself, rarely shared her experiences..."
They really wanted a child. But time passed, and the stork did not hurry to their home. Examinations, doctors, expensive treatment. And - nothing... And when they had almost lost hope, Lyuda became pregnant. What a joy it was! After ten years of marriage, the couple had a son, Dmytro.
“How could I have thought then that the happiest period of my life would soon be replaced by a black wasteland?” Oleksandr sighs.
A week after giving birth, Lyuda suddenly felt sick – right in the doctor's office, where she had come for a routine checkup. A few days later, she was gone... "I couldn't believe that all this was really happening to me... My wife was dying, and I had a baby in my arms. The end of the world."
Although ten years have passed since then, Oleksandr still cannot talk about those events calmly. Pain has no statute of limitations...
"Doctors later said that Lyuda had a bad heart. But she never complained, and for some reason the disease was not detected earlier... She had dreamed of having a child for so many years, but she was destined to be a mother for only a week..."
"People saved me. They called me and said that... they needed my help".
He had no other choice: he had to accept his fate and learn the role of both father and mother for his Dmytro. People's concern helped him to get out of the numbness and emotional abyss.
"People saved me. My friends and acquaintances called me: "Sasha, we need your help. We need to make repairs, fix something urgently. We can't do it without you! Can you help us out?" And I had been doing repair work for many years before that, and I can do everything with my own hands. That's how people pulled me out of depression. It is very stressful when you lose the other half, and so suddenly, so cruelly. Not everyone can survive it. It is in such situations that people show themselves the most..."
At first, relatives helped a lot with the child: Oleksandr's brother, father, and Dmytro's godmother. “And most of all, my grandmother, my mother,” the man says. "Without her support, I can't imagine how I would have managed. My mother has been my reliable rear all my life."
“Family is her greatest value and joy,” Mrs. Tetyana joins the conversation. She adores her grandson. She says Dmytro is growing up to be a nice, smart boy. He studies well, loves to draw and construct. He is polite. He has respect for his elders. He will always lend a hand, hold the door in the stairwell, and help. “Dmytro inherited many of his character traits from his mother,” says Ms. Tetyana. "He has a well-developed visual memory. Lyuda was just like that. I loved and love my daughter-in-law. She came to our family and seemed to have always been with us... Dmytro reminds me of her in appearance. He is a gentle, affectionate boy. Sasha, my son, does his best for him. He is a good father, he pays a lot of attention to his son, worries when the child is sick, they read a book together before going to bed and talk. He tries to keep him out of trouble. But the war... The war left its mark on the child. When the explosions in Chernihiv were heard at the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Dmytro was very scared. He withdrew into himself. It took us a long time to bring him out of this state..."
“My husband overcame the disease, but a Russian shell took his life...”
The war brought irreparable grief to their family. Mrs. Tetyana's husband, Oleksandr's father and Dmytro's grandfather, was killed by enemy shelling of Chernihiv on the 9th day of the city's siege.
"The war began at dawn on February 24 with explosions and fires. I felt confused: where to run, what to do? Everything happened too quickly and unexpectedly. “My son, mother and brother and I were hiding from the shelling in the basement of a school nearby,” says Oleksandr. "We slept there – on stools, benches, on the floor. It was very cold... My father stayed at home. In the afternoon, we would come and cook while the gas was on. And then the apartment lost both gas and heating because the occupiers blew up a gas pipe in Chernihiv. Dad decided to ride his bicycle to the other end of town, to the garage, to take a heater there to warm the cold apartment at least a little. He was killed by a cluster shell... The Russians shelled Chernihiv mercilessly. We were looking for my father for a long time, we did not know what happened to him. We found him a few days later, in the morgue... We were able to bury him only after the city was de-occupied. It was a terrible time for all of us."
Ms. Tetyana is 67. She lived with her husband for 42 happy years. "The war... took away my husband, the father of my children. He was our support,“ the woman says. ”I tell my boys: show that you are strong and sturdy. Dad sees us from heaven and is as proud of you as I am. We are holding on..."
Before the full-scale invasion, Ms. Tetyana's husband had a personal war with an illness. In 2019, doctors diagnosed a serious illness: stomach cancer. He underwent an operation and complex 6 sessions of chemotherapy. "He survived, and I believed that everything would be fine. We went through this journey together. Grisha really wanted to drive a car again: he was a driver. The doctor was confident that my husband would make a full recovery: the stage of the disease was initial, he had a chance, we had hope. But another terrible war caught up with him a few years later... and took his life."
The memories of that time are very bitter. Three weeks of living in the basement... The school building, like their house, was shaking when Russians dropped bombs on the city from airplanes. “We thought that the school would collapse along with the basement,” Oleksandr recalls. There were a lot of children in the basement with us, and we were worried about them the most. There was always a shortage of bread. Three bakeries in the town baked bread. The driver would drop off a new batch of freshly baked loaves and leave again. People lined up in long lines, waiting... And in that line, the Russians dropped cluster shells. Many people were killed... A convoy of volunteer vehicles near Chernihiv was also shot by the occupiers. And the volunteers were bringing us medicine, food, milk for the children. We lived without electricity, in cold and hunger, under constant explosions. And in a complete information blockade, because the Internet disappeared, television did not work..."
“Our gratitude to the Polish families for their support is immense...”
...Dmytro's drawings hang above his desk at school. Mrs. Tetyana took her grandson to art classes at the Center for Children's Creative Development in the city's central district. On that Sunday morning in August, they were also supposed to go to class, but they stayed home and missed the bus... An enemy missile hit the drama theater next to the center where Dmytro was learning to draw... Tetiana admits that she still can't overcome her fear and resume going to class with Dmytro, even though almost two years have passed since that tragic day.
Time passes unnoticed behind the conversations and memories. Dusk is slowly falling outside the window, Mrs. Tetyana is getting ready to cook dinner, and we are about to return to Kyiv. Dmytro shows us his brand new computer. He says he has been dreaming about it for a long time, because the laptop also helps him with his studies. The family was able to buy the computer and other necessary things like medicines, clothes, and food thanks to the support of the Ukrainian-Polish project “Family to Family”, Oleksandr says with gratitude.
"I have never asked for help in my life. I'm used to always relying on my own strength," the man admits. My friends heard about this project from Caritas-Spes Ukraine and said: try it. But the time was just so difficult: I had a hard time finding a job. I am very grateful that they chose our family, grateful for such important support. I saved some of the money to pay for Dmytro's education, textbooks, and developmental classes. It warms my heart to know that there are caring people who have extended a helping hand to us. Please convey our sincere gratitude to the Polish families for their big, kind hearts."
... As he walks us to the door, Oleksandr proudly tells us that his son is already better at computers, programs, and various messengers than he is. “He's even teaching me,” he smiles gently, talking about his Dmytro. "I look at him and see my Lyuda. Lyuda had the same look in his eyes: he would look at me and everything would be clear. For me, he is the best boy in the world. He has his own point of view. When I try to explain something, he can object: no, dad, it's different now...
I dream that he will grow up to be a good person. I want him to know what he will need in life. I often use Lyuda as an example for him. Your mom, I say, has been cooking since she was 5 years old and helping in the kitchen. And I have achieved a lot myself, learned a lot. That's why I want my son to learn only good things from other people."
The Polish-Ukrainian project “Family to Family” was implemented by Caritas-Spes Ukraine with the support of Caritas Poland in the Kyiv-Zhytomyr, Kharkiv-Zaporizhzhia Dioceses and Lviv Archdiocese. The project provided financial support to low-income families with many children, families with a single mother or father raising a child, families raising children with disabilities, single elderly people in difficult situations, and internally displaced Ukrainians affected by the consequences of the war.
