This Christmas will be our first in Ireland since leaving Ukraine, and the first without my mother

In one of the least oppressive outcomes of the Russian invasion of our country, Christmas is coming early for Ukrainians. In normal times, we celebrate on January 6th, our Christmas Eve. These are not normal times. Earlier this year the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, after many years of arguments about the date, gave its blessing to Ukrainians all over the world to celebrate Christmas on December 25th. This move is designed to bring Ukraine closer to the West and take us further away, symbolically, from Russia. And so, this Christmas, I will mark the occasion with my father Leonid on December 25th. It will be our first Christmas in December. And our first one without my mother.

* * *

The last time I saw my mother we were standing in the hallway of our house in Cork, a home provided for us by the local Church of Ireland community.

It was early July. We had been living in Ireland since March.

Having fled the bombardments of Kyiv last February, on the first day of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, we initially stayed with my aunt in a village 100km to the south.

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After a week, an Irish grassroots initiative invited us to come and stay with a host family in Cork. Thanks to their hard work and generosity, my parents and I were also able to bring my cousin and her tiny baby to safety. In early March, the five of us crossed from Ukraine into Poland to fly to Ireland. We found a safe harbour in Cork thanks to the kindness of strangers who have become like a second family in these dark times.

* * *

The last time I saw my mother I was on my way out the door, heading up to Dublin by train to visit a friend. I was wearing a long dress and a pair of runners. My mother, Olga, looked at me, and said, “Do you want me to give you money to buy some proper clothes?” I was irritated. This was her roundabout way of saying she hated what I was wearing. I told her, “Mum, I’m fine, don’t you want to buy something nice for yourself?” It was an ordinary exchange, similar to so many other conversations we’d had over the years. I only remember it now because it was our last.

* * *

My mind returns to recent Christmases in Kyiv. My brother and I would visit my parents in their home for the celebratory Christmas Eve feast on January 6th. Like many Ukrainians, our family is not religious, so ours was a secular Christmas. My mother would make the traditional 12 small dishes but they were mostly untraditional, because she and my dad were strict vegans. There’d be vegetable salads, pickles and baked potatoes stuffed with mushrooms. We’d have the meal, we’d chat, we’d fall out a few times and make up with each other again. Joni Mitchell was right. You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.

* * *

Last March, a few days after we came to Ireland, we had a small traditional music session with our host family in Cork. It was also my mum and dad’s 35th wedding anniversary. Our host played The Marino Waltz on the uilleann pipes as my parents held on to each other and danced.

* * *

When they arrived in Ireland, my mum and dad had practically no words of English. Coming to Ireland was a terrifying experience for my mother. She struggled to get used to being so completely dependent on the mercy of strangers, on the Irish State and on me.

It was different for me. I had been to Ireland before, completing an MA at Queen’s University Belfast. Unlike my parents, I had fluent English and was making good progress with my Irish. This helped me seek support for my family here.

My parents both signed up for English lessons at a charity in Cork but my mother struggled, intimidated by not being able to communicate even the simplest things.

* * *

Somebody who met my mother in her new Irish habitat compared her to a small bird. This comparison made so much sense to me. Back in Kyiv my mother lived in her cosy nest, which she had been building for decades. Now she had left the nest behind in a forced kind of migration. She also left behind my brother who went back to Kyiv to defend it. She was more terrified by the thought of leaving home than by the threat of dying by a Russian missile. It is difficult for people to understand perhaps, but she would have preferred to live under the bomb than be exposed to something completely new in what she thought was her old age.

* * *

My mother was 62 when she died.

* * *

In Ukraine, my mother knew who she was and how to live. In Ireland, she was always asking me when we could go back home.

* * *

My work in human rights continued when I arrived in Ireland. When Russia’s full-scale invasion happened, I began documenting enforced disappearances of activists in Ukraine by the Russian forces. I searched for open-source information about abductions, interviewed family members of the disappeared, wrote reports, and spoke to journalists and international organisations including the OSCE and the UN Monitoring Mission in Ukraine. The stories I heard were incredibly painful. I worked and watched the war from afar while minding my own family. I learnt a lot about survivor guilt as part of my job. Like many Ukrainian refugees, I carry it with me every day.

* * *

My mother was, as all humans are, full of paradoxes. She was somebody who was passionate about everything, especially about living, but she was also often scared of life. She was sharp and curious and independent, and yet she wanted to be looked after, to be minded. She could be admirably fierce and yet she was deeply vulnerable.

* * *

There were happy days. My mother was taken by our host family to visit the mountains in east Cork. They also took her on a day trip to the beach. She came back from these trips full of enthusiasm for this country. I was glad that, even fleetingly, I could share my deep love of Ireland and its culture with my parents.

* * *

Pets are sometimes unacknowledged casualties of war. Sirius Black is my brother’s beloved cat. As a member of territorial defence, he was defending Kyiv, so it was not possible for him to keep Sirius there. He brought the cat to my aunt’s house when my parents and I fled Kyiv, but we couldn’t risk leaving Sirius in the countryside in case my aunt had to flee herself.

I decided to take him with us to Ireland, but it turned out the low-cost airline we were flying with from Poland did not transport pets. Instead, we found a Ukrainian emigree to foster him in Poland until we could bring him here.

It was a long drawn out saga, but eventually I went to Krakow and brought Sirius back. My mother was pleased to see him. She doted on that cat. A country girl herself, she’d never had an indoor cat and she wished we could let him roam about. We couldn’t let him roam because of quarantine regulations. My mother said she didn’t want the cat to feel trapped. I think that’s how she felt herself, far from home with no hope of return.

* * *

It is still hard to believe but my beautiful mother died on Saturday, July 2nd while I was in Dublin with friends. War does not take lives only on the frontline. War does not take lives only by bombs or bullets. War takes lives in many different ways.

* * *

When my mother died, my brother was still at home in Ukraine, serving part-time in the territorial defence. I have often felt like a soldier myself, a civilian soldier, making sure my parents remained safe and alive. I talk to other Ukrainian friends, some of whom are also refugees in other countries. They understand this feeling. My mother died suddenly and unexpectedly. I know it is irrational to feel guilty about her death, because there were factors at play beyond my control. But I do feel guilty. It was my duty to keep her safe. To keep her alive.

* * *

There was a war going on. There is a war going on. This is what I tell myself every now and again to ease the guilt.

* * *

People make choices we don’t always understand. We all cope differently. My cousin chose to return to Ukraine with her baby after my mother died. Meanwhile, I cultivated my inner “tough guy” to deal with the bureaucracy related to her death. I dealt with my grief by cracking atrociously dark jokes. Whatever gets you through.

***

The day before my mother’s funeral I made a giant pot of borscht. It’s a traditional Ukrainian dish that brings people together. It’s just vegetable soup with beetroot, sure, but it’s also much more than just a soup. It is an everyday dish but it is also served at weddings and any really important occasions. It represents continuity in life, and fills you with warmth and comfort. I wanted to feel all of that while I was grieving my mother far from home. It’s something we would have had at the funeral lunch in Ukraine, if we were there with all of my extended family.

* * *

There are many different ways to make our national soup. Everyone has their own recipe. I make it the way my grandmother taught me. She likes a sour borscht, with vinegar and pickled cabbage. In the end I made two pots of borscht and a few plates of savoury potato pastries, also traditional to Ukraine. On the morning of the funeral, some neighbours brought in sandwiches covered tightly in tinfoil and cling film, another family brought yet more soup. The table was heaving.

* * *

At the funeral lunch, people stood around slurping my brightly coloured borscht and munching sandwiches. Before my mother died, it had been my dream to have a housewarming party bringing together all the people who helped us settle in Cork. But I was always too busy. Or I was too tired. I also worried my parents might not be comfortable with a crowd. The lunch after the funeral was not the housewarming I had planned. But in a strange way it served that purpose, allowing people in my life to meet each other for the first time. I was filled with gratitude for the people who came to support me and dad. They came from all over the country. Our former host family, neighbours, volunteers who helped us make it safely to Ireland, members of the Church of Ireland in Cork, friends in academia and in the media. They offered comfort and solidarity when I needed it most. To eat borscht with them was a powerful, heartwarming moment, albeit in horrible circumstances.

* * *

My mother’s death left me in pieces, but I have had no other choice but to build my life back. There have been some lighter moments since. For three days back in early September, at the time of the Kharkiv counter-offensive, I could do nothing except lie on the couch, following all the news from Ukraine. One of those days, my dad and I went for pints and crisps in the local GAA pub near where we live in Cork City. Over the previous days, we had watched on our phones the liberation of Balakliya, which prompted jokes about Baile Átha Cliath being liberated from the Russian army. Deoccupation of Kupyansk and Izium followed. The battle for Lyman started around that time. That night when we were in the pub, there were also rumours of fighting near Donetsk airport. They weren’t confirmed later, but at the time they gave us hope, because my dad is from Donetsk.

As all of this was going on I was chatting by text to a friend, an academic from Cork. She asked where we were drinking and arrived at the pub with her husband and their friend. We were all together, cheering and celebrating. I remember feeling hopeful and delighted, daring to dream that the war might end. After my mother’s death, that night in the pub provided a rare moment of cheer.

* * *

There will be other such moments. We know we are lucky to be in Ireland. The reception and the pre-emptive action to host refugees in this country was incredible, the support and volunteering across the country has been overwhelming.

I do not take the Irish welcome for granted. I also understand that this is the biggest displacement in Europe since the second World War. More than four million Ukrainian refugees are under temporary protection in the EU. Nobody was prepared for this, and it is a huge challenge for all involved.

It is impossible to know what lies ahead. I dearly hope Ukraine will be able to defend its skies and deter Russia’s barrage of long-range missiles with its own long-range defences. I hope new counteroffensives will liberate our territories, and it will be safe to go home. But there are no guarantees.

Russia is now weaponising refugees by targeting civilian infrastructure. As a result, many people face living through this harsh Ukrainian winter in sub-zero temperatures without electricity or heat or water.

I am worried that there may be another wave of Ukrainians fleeing these unbearable conditions. I am worried about the shortage of housing. I am worried about the harassment of refugees. This Christmas, a question hovers over me and over many other Ukrainian refugees: how long will there be room for us at the inn?

* * *

Six months after my mother’s death, my grief at her loss is still profound. My father and I often talk about her life and her death. We talk about how he is coping without her. He’s doing well, considering.

Having quit my job, I’ve begun working on a PhD, which I had secured before the Russian invasion. I keep busy, but I can barely keep up with my dad: He has English lessons nearly every day. He is learning Irish on Duolingo. He got himself an electronic piano, and plays his music at home. He’s doing concerts with other refugees. He joined a Ukrainian choir in Ballincollig. He is writing his memoirs. Most days he talks to his friends in Ukraine. He is slowly, busily, rebuilding his life without my mother.

* * *

Coming to the end of this terrible year, my own life feels broken, but I’m slowly healing too. For this Christmas and new year I wish for victory in Ukraine. Like my fellow Ukrainians wherever they are – still at home, in evacuation abroad, under the Russian occupation – I wish for our safe return so we can start to rebuild our home country.

* * *

We have to hold on to any signs of hope. Maybe there is a glimmer of it in the fact that Christmas is coming early for us this year. I will think of my mother and mark the occasion with my father in our temporary home in Cork. There will be borscht. We will bake potatoes and stuff them with mushrooms. Dad will play the piano, I will annoy peacefully snoozing Sirius, and we’ll be checking our phones constantly for any news from home.