Ladies That Stayed

FESCH.TV INFORMIERT:

Yerukhimovich Nadiya Panasivna, 89 years old had been bedridden for three months as the Russian invasion began and life was altered at her apartment in Kyiv, Ukraine on March 26, 2022. Sounds of airstrikes on the outskirts of the city echo on her walls and a shelling recently hit the neighborhood. All her life she worked on a vegetable farm and from the hard work she now has osteochondrosis and a fall broke her thigh. Her son Misha, 54. has not evacuated in order to care for his mother who is unable to travel. He is concerned about a lack of medicine, especially painkillers.
She is grateful for his devotion but says ‘He’s tired of it already, because it’s hard to serve something, clean, feed, wash. And run to buy everything we need. I try to bother him less, because I understand, but I have a good son because there are those who leave their parents and go.’
She receives food and medicine from a group of local residents that formed a humanitarian network called Angels of Kyiv to deliver supplies to the elderly and infirm left behind. The founders are her neighbors and now service over 1000 people.
Most of the elderly compare the invasion to WWII. She feels blessed for the moment as it is not yet as bad in Kyiv as some ares or the memories of the past. ‘As a child we ate nettles, then there was famine,’ she stated. ‘Now there is sugar, there is bread. Everything is as it is, you need to survive. I am worried about the youth. I don’t have much time left.’
Her secret to longevity? ‘The main thing is that the soul is filled with light, goodness and love,’ she declares.
As an artist Misha is still making paintings but he complains a bit about a loss of creativity saying, ‘When guns speak, muses are silent.’
She buried her husband fifty years ago and all her sisters and brothers died. They sang all their lives in amateur clubs. She shyly sings a moving folk song called Mother’s Braid.
___________________________________________
MOTHER’S BRAID
Oh, what that viburnum twisted
Is there a lot of flowers or heavy dew?
Oh, why did my mother turn gray so early?
And she had a golden braid.
Mother’s roads, mother’s anxieties
Fate stretched to an unknown distance.
She shall go out of the gate and stand by the way.
Sadness intertwines with gray hair.
Fogs spread through meadows,
Fogs are spreading on deep dreams …
Hey, dear far away, turn to mom
There will be less gray in her braids.

Video Credit © Carol Guzy/ZUMA Press