The dying populate a single structure in the reclaimed but devastated Ukrainian hamlet of Izium.
It needs extra heat to ward off the impending cold because it smells like dirty bedding and unbathed flesh. The halls of this house echo with the sound of weeping, and despair hangs over its inhabitants like a blanket.
Currently, an orphan with his eyes firmly fixed on the phone in his palm traverses the chilly hallways amid the frail and aged. 13-year-old Bohdan had a father up until recently. He is now alone.
Before finally succumbing to stomach cancer on October 3 at a shelter for the injured and homeless, Bohdan’s father withered away for weeks there. At the end of his life, Mykola Svyryd worried for his son every time he was awake.
He rushes over to me and tells me, “Papa, I love you. In a bedside interview just a few days before he passed away at the age of 70, Svyryd stated, “I tell him, ‘Who else could you love?'” He had sunken cheeks and thin skin. His father is aged, and his mother has passed away.
I won’t know if someone is with him or where they will send him when his father is gone.
A rehabilitation facility for those recovering from operations or injuries was established in the modest compound in the eastern town in January. A month later, when hostilities broke out, Russian forces swept the town under their control. Within a matter of weeks, airstrikes, artillery and fires had left their mark on nearly every building.
Those who lacked the wherewithal to leave the city in time cowered in its basements, barely making it without running water, gas, or power. A Ukrainian counteroffensive that surged through the Kharkiv region in early September forced the Russians to make an unorganised retreat from Izium and other towns.
However, their departure had little impact on Izium’s poverty. There is nowhere else for the 39 persons who are sleeping in the rehab facility.
Their homes have been destroyed, they are old and poor, and the rest of their families have passed away or disappeared.
The tears start to flow as soon as all of it sinks in.
Bohdan and Mykola Svyryd arrived here in this manner as well. Cancer had claimed the life of Bohdan’s mother two years prior, and Svyryd was already terminal when the conflict began.
The boy was born with a neurological damage, which his father had hoped would ultimately be surgically repaired.
Bohdan speaks little, only a few brief phrases at a time, interspersed with hesitant glances and shy grins.
“He was crippled from birth. He did not attend school. I instructed him in some reading, how to write numbers and letters, “As for his son, Svyryd said.
Svyryd, a retired former employee of an eyeglass lens manufacturing facility, sought refuge with his son from the Russian attack on the town, which had destroyed all the windows in their flat. Neighbours helped where they could as his health gradually failed.
“We were forced to spend three months in a basement. My health progressively became worse after we left. My legs then quit functioning,” Svyryd remarked. He was sick, malnourished, and his voice hardly broke a whisper by the time he spoke to reporters.
In the dying days of his father, Bohdan gave him loving embraces frequently. He hums along to Ukrainian pop songs and enjoys playing handheld video games just like any other adolescent.
He doesn’t appear to find it unusual that he is the only young person in a building full of elderly people, but he also doesn’t engage with them much either. He shuffles unsteadily around the little front courtyard of the recovery centre while wearing a knit cap and a blue hooded coat.
Svyryd was laid to rest in a straightforward burial marked by a colourful bouquet of artificial flowers and a wooden cross in a cemetery outside of Izium.
Bohdan has frequently sat in their shared room at the shelter since his father’s passing, gazing out into the distance. Now that he is sleeping somewhere else in the shelter, the staff is hoping that a change of scenery may help to lessen his suffering.
Due to the conflict and his father’s illness, the surgery had to be postponed; however, it is now scheduled for the upcoming days. In the end, Bohdan will be put up for adoption, adding him to the growing number of Ukrainian orphans.
But occasionally, he continues to inquire about his father.
Orphan saw his father die and is now waiting for the future in a shelter in Ukraine.
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