This text was written by a winner of the 2024 call for feminist essays.
“It is so early, losing your mom when you’re twenty,” my therapist says sympathetically at our session. I wrap the blanket tightly around my shoulders, longing for warmth and a gentle hug. With these simple, supportive words, she gave me permission for my unshed tears. The dam has burst.
Of course, I mourned my mother after she died. Eighteen years ago, things were painful, but also confusing: Who am I? An orphan? But aren’t orphans those who lost their mother when they were still children? And I am already an adult. How should I go on? Should I grieve for a person who has wronged and hurt me? These questions were relentless, devaluing my feelings and preventing me from fully processing my loss.
Back then, I tried to numb the pain by any means available: with alcohol and missing classes in college, suppressing my emotions and pretending like I was handling things well. And many years later, in that therapy session, I realized that I had not fully processed my loss. Time had not healed my wound, growing over it instead like a nasty, blotchy scar, which sometimes oozes painful memories and keeps me painfully aware. More than ever, I wanted to visit her grave. To sit there alone, to cry the tears that remained unshed, to speak the unspoken, to ask about the unasked.
But it is impossible. Because there is war. The village where Mom is buried is on the border with russia.
And right away, I am overwhelmed by memories.
***
A long time ago, when peace still prevailed, visiting our family’s graves in the cemetery was part of our family tradition. Once a year, or perhaps every few years, you were supposed to go to the village and visit the cemetery. The visit was usually tied to specific dates. In other towns and villages, people went on special days of remembrance. In our village, the day was always Easter Sunday. If you met friends in another town or spoke to them on the phone, you would always ask them: “Are you going home for Easter?” In response, they would sometimes shake their heads and complain: “It’s been five years since I was there. I should go sometime.”
Going to the cemetery on Easter Sunday was not just about visiting the graves of the deceased; it was also an opportunity to see friends and relatives you had not seen for a long time. Even those who did not visit the village often or had no living relatives there would come back for Easter.
Preparation for the holiday itself was just as important. You always had to tidy up the graves. No matter the weather, old, worn overshoes, occasionally smeared with muck, could be seen shuffling to the cemetery. They are the most comfortable footwear for those who have to tidy up the graves and the surrounding area. Rakes, scythes and secateurs were brought into the cemetery to clear last year’s weeds, rake leaves, remove faded plastic wreaths and flowers. And on Easter Day, new ones were brought, glowing neon colors, with drops of transparent, hardened glue that imitated dewdrops. Yes, this is damaging to nature, but who thinks about that at Easter? These flowers were a special sign. If you saw a fresh flower on the grave, it meant that someone had been here before you. If a grave had lots of wreaths and bouquets, it meant that the deceased had a large family.
On the holiday itself, dozens of cars surrounded the cemetery and parked under poplar trees. Pairs of brand-new shoes, lacquered pumps, white urban sneakers and even thin stilettos that stubbornly sank into the ground, leaving tiny deep grooves — they all approached the graves. Looking at the pattern of the grooves, you can tell: here she moved in one place for a while — she must have met someone she knew; here she stood motionless for a long time — she must have had something to think about; and here she ran so fast that she barely touched the ground — she must have been in a hurry to see someone. And here she stopped again: She must have been asked to taste someone’s paska, the Easter bread. And there will be twelve such stops. In the village, it was believed that a woman who tasted twelve different paskas that day would get married or that her fondest wish would come true. Not all the girls wanted to get married, but they were happy to try the paskas.
You could tell immediately from the shoes what kind of person it was. Was it a braggart from moscow who visited the graves of his relatives once a year, or was it a poor drunkard who never takes off his boots but keeps ancient, long-toed, lace-up shoes for Easter? No one had worn shoes like that for a long time, and his pair looked brand new, and he only wore them on Easter Sunday to put them in the back of the closet and reach for them next year, dust them off and go to the cemetery again. You might run into a former classmate who would love to chat with you, or your neighbors who would surely share some food.
Some shoes went to the cemetery regularly, as soon as they had spare time, some once a year, and some only every few years. Worn, comfortable shoes would jog to the grave, leave a piece of paska and a traditional painted egg — a krashanka — behind, and disappear.
***
My sister lived in a village near the cemetery and she looked after the graves of our mother, grandmother and other relatives. And she always went there on Easter Day to share news. “Have you seen anyone?” I asked when I could not go myself. “No one,” she replied. “If anyone was there, it was just a very brief visit.” For the past two years, the cemetery has been almost empty at Easter. This spring, there were more untidy graves than ever before. Throughout Ukraine, the police and authorities warn against visiting the cemetery in areas of active hostilities or near the russian border. You never see white urban sneakers or polished pumps here anymore. People do not come back because the border with the aggressor country is seven kilometers from the village. The air raid can last from morning to night.
My sister left the village, severing the last delicate thread that connected me to this place of encounter with the living and the dead. Sometimes she returns to work in the vegetable garden or to see if the house is still standing, but she is always in a hurry, because the Russians could launch their planes at any moment and bomb houses or cemeteries, the living or the dead.
The village suffers from regular shelling. Submachine and machine guns, Shaheds, guided aerial bombs. Everything is aiming here — to leave two children without a mother, destroying the house of a bedridden retired woman, forcing whole families to pack up and go — God knows where. Houses are burning, fields are littered with missile craters. Mutilated beets lie dying in the vegetable gardens.
I wonder how many of those who are now destroying the village used to come here from russia to visit their grandma, go to the cemetery and tend the cows. How many of them have opted for military boots instead of their polished shoes? Aren’t they too heavy?
Ukrainian cemeteries no longer offer the peace and quiet that the relatives of the deceased used to seek.
On September 2, 2023, shelling destroyed graves at the Kramatorsk cemetery.
On October 5, 2023, a russian Iskander missile hit a café in the village of Hroza in Kharkiv Oblast during a memorial service for a fallen soldier. 59 people died — one in five residents of the village.
On October 11, 2023, an explosive dropped from a drone hit a place next to the cemetery in Kindiitsi village, Kherson oblast. Three people were injured.
On June 20, 2024, russia shelled one of the city cemeteries in Kherson, damaging about a dozen graves.
On July 16, 2024, the russian army shelled the cemetery in the city of Pokrovsk.
***
The older you get, the more you are drawn back to your roots. Something that seemed unimportant, a place you wanted to escape from when you were young, lures you back. The connection to the land where your loved ones are buried is strong.
***
I wrap up my therapy session and cry for a long time. With my tears, I wash away the pain of my loss. Only now I do not just miss Mom, but also the fact that I cannot choose when I want to visit her; the village is inaccessible without a special permit. I have not been there often in recent years, and I do not know if I would go if there was not a war, if I would have even started to think about it — but I wish that when I feel the longing of my soul, the tingling of my heart, I could pack my things and go: to visit the dead and see the living.
So I sit down and write a letter to Mom. I beg her forgiveness and tell her every complaint I had, apologizing for never telling her this while she was alive. I promise her that for Easter I will try baking paskas for the first time in my life. I will brush them with an egg before I put them in the oven, so they come out shiny and browned. I will not glaze them with beaten egg whites because I do not want to hide that polished shine. Instead of colorful sprinkles, I will decorate them with braids and cones of pastry. Later, I will reach for these “braids” like when I was little because they are crispy and taste the best. I will buy baked milk or ryazhanka, which tastes best with such a paska. Maybe I will even pick out the raisins to feel the special atmosphere and smell of mom’s holiday. I promise her that I will definitely visit her grave, even many years later, even if there is no one else in the village. I will put on the same old overshoes and set about clearing the weeds around the graves, cutting back the maple thickets and the tall dry tops of soldier’s woundwort.
I will do it because I want to, not because I have to. When the war is over. If the cemetery survives. If I survive.
The views of the authors do not necessarily reflect the position of the members of the organisation.