I buried my Mom in a park in Irpin. Her body was exhumed and I went through all circles of hell to f
55-year-old Halyna Fominykh couldn’t get used to silence for some time after the spontaneous evacuation from Irpin. She also forgot what it meant to live with any amenities of civilization because she spent three weeks in a basement of a building that used to be an office during peaceful times. Halyna Fominykh told us about those horrible days when the Russian army was in Irpin. Now we present her story in the form of a monologue.
The office became a shelter for people, parrots, and a dog
My husband and I decided to stay in Irpin. Until March 5, we lived in our apartment. We had gas and electricity back then. Our neighbor Ania was staying with us. She lived alone and we offered her to move in with us. It’s less scary when you’re with someone. When a bomb hit a place near our home, we decided that we should leave our apartment and hide somewhere. The next morning we went to our friends who live in a private house. We thought we’d stay there for a while. On our way there, we met Ania’s acquaintance. As we talked, we discovered that there was an office in the basement of our apartment building. That man gave us the keys to it.
Halyna in a house with cut off electricity
We convinced Ania to evacuate. She’s young; she’ll marry and have kids. I want her to have a long and happy life. There were only the two of us in the converted basement. My husband and I brought mattresses, blankets, and food that wouldn’t go bad. For a few days, we even had running water. It was probably trickling to us from the upper floors.
The next day we were visited by Oleksandr, who also moved here from Donetsk. He lived in another part of Irpin, renting a room in a private house. At that point, there was no service. Oleksandr visited us to suggest moving to his house. When he saw our shelter, he decided that it was probably safer than his place and he joined us. He came to us with his landlord’s dog and they both stayed with us. After a couple of days, we were joined by a small family: Yurii Ivanovych, his wife, their child, and two parrots.
Halyna and her husband
I go to my mom’s nursing home while the town is under fire
Then we brought in my mom from a private nursing home. There were dozens of elderly people with visual impairments, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, and dementia there. Mom had completely lost her hearing, she had severe dementia and was totally immobile because of a brain tumor. I couldn’t look after her on my own, especially when my husband was away on work trips. Our one-room rented apartment didn’t have proper conditions for a bedridden patient. After half a year of trying, we decided to move Mom to a private nursing home where I visited her every day.
Halyna’s Mom
The nursing home was in another part of Irpin. We had to take two buses to get there. When the war started, public transportation stopped working, and it took me 45 minutes to get there on foot. All this was accompanied by heavy shelling in the city. One day during my visit a nurse came up to me and said that the owners of the home had left. They had no cash, and the small shops nearby didn’t accept card payments. They were running out of food and didn’t know what to do. I found volunteers on Facebook who brought food to the nursing home. I also brought what I could. When I came there a few days later, I found out that the staff has left too. The nursing home was full of people from some church, and they didn’t know how to look after sick people. The nurses left without even giving us a call.
My neighbor broke into a drug store, which later was shelled
I was going on and on to my husband saying that we needed to move my Mom because she would surely die without necessary care. Moreover, there were heavy battles in that part of Irpin. Eventually, we somehow found some brave people who drove with my husband to the nursing home. We put my Mom on blankets and moved her to our basement. We had a folding bed there and so she lay in it. At that time the nursing home and the rest of the town had no water, electricity, or gas. Obviously, nobody washed my Mom, so she had trophic ulcers and sores.
Yurii Ivanovych, our basement neighbor, was in our local Territorial Defense. He decided to break into the nearest drug store. It was shelled a day later. And so we took medicine from the drug store, packaged it, and gave it away to those who needed it, to those who stayed in the neighboring houses. We also helped our Territorial Defense fighters and gave them medicine. Yurii Ivanovych delivered tourniquets, painkillers, and bandages to checkpoints. I saved some disposable diapers and bandages for my Mom. They helped us a lot.
Yurii and his son
We gave food to the neighbor’s cat and abandoned goats
We had food. Some neighbors left us keys to their apartments. They said that we could take anything we need there. The need came up when we started running out of water, food, and candles. We took bottled water and food from cut-off fridges. We sent silent thank-yous to our neighbors for their food. The temperature was below zero outside so the food didn’t get spoiled in our basement. We cooked outside using a campfire or a grill, which we placed near our building’s entrance. If we heard sounds of shelling, we immediately ran back into the building and closed a metal door behind us.
Yurii Ivanovych from the Territorial Defense was helping a lot of people, but one day he got a contusion, broken ribs, and injured leg when the local hospital was shelled. His friend was killed by shell fragments there. We started talking about evacuation, and our neighbors, the family with a child and the parrots, left on March 18. Only four of us and the dog stayed in the basement.
The life of animals during the war is a big and painful subject. So many dogs of different breeds came to us and asked for food. A herd of goats also visited us. Their owners left and the herd stayed. We gave them defrosted food from cut-off fridges.
I buried Mom at the park entrance
Each day we went up to our apartment where there was at least some service, called our son and told him that we were alive. Everyone was persuading us to leave, but I couldn’t even imagine how I would do it with a bedridden Mom. I know that people went to the destroyed bridge in Romanivka on foot and had to cross below it.
The destroyed bridge in Irpin
I knew that there wasn’t much time left for my mom. I was afraid she would die on the road. Moreover, there were no official evacuation routes anymore. We were shelled from all kinds of weapons. We had no access to news; we didn’t understand what was the situation in the city. Some people said that Irpin was occupied, others were assuring us that Irpin was ours and the invaders had been thrown out of the city.
Mom died on March 24. We buried her the same day near our house, at the entrance to the Pokrovskyi park. It was very difficult because there was heavy shelling at that time. We were digging the grave and then running back to the building. We had to do it three times. It was very dangerous.
That same day a young woman was killed by a bomb in a private yard nearby. She wanted to find a place with some service where she could make a call. I remembered her because a couple of days before the mayor of Irpin brought humanitarian aid and she was there. She asked for angina medicine for her mother. In the end, her mother buried her in their yard…
We were evacuated by animal rescuers
After the symbolic funeral, I started realizing how dangerous it was to stay there. I started panicking and crying. At that point only five people were left in our nine-floor apartment building: a woman with a bedridden husband and a married couple with a child.
On March 26 my husband went outside for a smoke when a truck with volunteers was passing by. My husband asked whether they could take us. They gave us 10 minutes to pack. As it turned out, they were some desperate animal rescuers, who saved animals even under fire. We went to Kyiv in their truck full of dogs and cats. Our Donetsk friend Oleksandr didn’t want to come with us and stayed in the office with his dog and Barney the cat.
We didn’t get any news for a month, and when we were leaving Irpin I saw all the destructions for the first time. I was shocked at what became of a flourishing city because of the invaders. And the bridge in Romanivka looked as if an apocalyptic film came to life.
You can’t even imagine how happy I was to see Ukrainian soldiers at the checkpoints. I cried and wished for all of them to stay alive and to witness our victory. Later I watched some footage from Irpin and I realized that the russian soldiers were just across the road from our shelter. The distance was about 150 meters. It’s terrifying even to think what would happen if they got to us, what would they do to us. I think I’m having PTSD now. I’m scared of both silence and sudden noises, always straining my ears. I don’t sleep well. Back in Irpin, I was tough, I was like a warrior. That’s mostly because of Mom: she needed care, and there was no one to do it but me.
Destroyed Irpin
I want to return to Irpin as soon as possible
We have left Irpin and were more or less safe. In the house where we lived the first thing I did was fill every container with water. Just in case. I found out where to buy candles and where the shelters were located nearby. II have some experience about such things: my knowledge comes from 2014. But my Donetsk house had a real shelter. It was an old apartment building built by captured Germans during the war. When we left Donetsk and moved to Irpin, I fell in love with the town immediately. I had a feeling as if I were born here, as if I lived here my entire life. The houses were so beautiful, the town so clean, it was a pleasure to look at. It was a truly European town.
We returned to our hometown a few days ago. We will do our best to rebuild our beloved Irpin. My husband is an electrician, he went there to help with fixing electricity. Fortunately, our rented apartment wasn’t damaged too much: a window was broken in the living room, and the gas pipe was cut with the shards. Our building already has gas, water, and electricity. People are gradually coming back. They’re cleaning the mess.
My Mom was exhumed without us, and I went through all circles of hell to find her body and bury her in the cemetery. Neither the police nor local authorities could tell us where the body was moved. I was just lucky enough to find her unidentified body in a morgue in Bucha.
