APU Careers & Learning Online Learning Original

Ukraine: The Wanton Destruction of Homes and Loved Ones

By Dr. Jaclyn Maria Fowler
Department Chair, English and Literature

For centuries – perhaps millennia – poets and prose writers have struggled to put into words the abstract concepts of love, honor and home. Capturing the core of these elusive concepts is hard; our language does not have the depth of feeling they require. However, some writers have come close to expressing the inexpressible beauty of love, honor and home, especially when it comes to home.

American poet Maya Angelou once noted, “The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.” She had a deep knowledge of this kind of ache. As a very young child, Angelou’s life was shattered by divorce, and she was forced to leave her safe place – her home.

Although you can physically leave your home, your safe space stays with you – piercing your heart and soul through your memories. In other words, while we may leave home, home never leaves us.

Watching the Exodus from the US

In the U.S., we watch from our own safe homes as 6.5 million Ukrainian refugees are displaced from their homes; another 3.5 million have made the decision to leave Ukraine. We feel the ache of their loss, but we must walk in their shoes to understand the painful decision to leave home.

Look around where you live. If you were forced to leave your own safe home, what would you take besides your memories? What could you hold on your back, in your arms or on a leash? What would you be forced to leave?

In addition, who would provide strength by holding your hands on the journey? Your children? Your parents? Your elderly neighbors?

My friend, former student and fellow teacher, Anastasiia S., recently confronted these questions. She will soon be forced to consider the real possibility of leaving what she’s always known as home.

Russian bombs have fallen near and on her hometown of Lviv – some too close to where her husband is stationed. For Anastasiia, being uprooted has become a very real possibility. For now, she has chosen to stay in Lviv.

In her war journal, Anastasiia noted, “I didn’t leave the country. Just cannot. I don’t have a rational explanation. I think many Ukrainians feel these days something similar. Our relatives from Kyiv returned to their Kyiv apartment, which has survived on the left bank, and tomorrow she plans to go to her workshop to sew gloves for the military. People gravitate toward the normal way of life against all odds.”

However, the choice to stay home can change on a dime in wartime. Nothing is ever really settled in such circumstances.

air raid siren alerts
Air raid siren alerts sent out by phone. Image courtesy of Anastasiia S.

In war, nothing but death is final. And when the illusion of a decision of staying or going is made, the piercing cry of air raid sirens that disrupts sleep and terrifies loved ones is a stark reminder of the impermanence of such a decision.  

In her war journal, Anastasiia observed, “On Sunday morning after the night russian missiles struck the military range near Lviv, I planned to leave Ukraine – I repacked rucksacks and messaged our friends to Poland to restore my sense of safety. Then, we went for a walk – because it was Sunday and we used to go to the park on Sundays.

“In the evening, I decided to postpone the final decision to the next day. On Monday, I installed the air raid notification app on my phone for the first time for all these days of the war – no more denying the sirens.”

‘Die Like a Hero Going Home’

The great Shawnee chief Tecumseh once said, “When your time comes to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with fear of death, so that when their time comes, they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.”

In embattled Ukraine, many people have chosen their homes over fear. Some have stubbornly stayed through the shelling; others have returned after wandering. The latter group have followed the ache for home back to their safe spaces, even when they were not safe.

Related link: The Destruction of ‘Normal’ and How Ukrainians Cope in Lviv

Struggling to Keep Daily Life in Ukraine As Normal As Possible

Now as Ukrainians begin to reestablish the institutions that shaped their lives before the sanctity of their country was shattered, their screens are filled with images of those who will never return. They include women and children taking shelter in an art school in Mariupol, the elderly residents of a nursing home in Luhansk and a Holocaust survivor in Kharkiv. All were the targets of one madman’s frustration.

Anastasiia said, “In 13 regions of Ukraine, children and students have started online learning since Monday. All classes are reduced in number and volume. The learning process adds more routine, but also more responsibilities. Teachers and students are intensively involved in helping refugees all over the city.”

At the beginning of the war when courses were originally suspended, students and teachers of Lviv focused their energies on the internal refugees who had come to their city from other parts of Ukraine. So although the routine of school has returned, the refugees continue to enter Lviv. By the fourth week of the war, more than two million refugees have passed through Lviv on their way to Poland.

“All Lviv shelters are filled with the people who escaped to Lviv,” Anastasiia noted. “According to the information posted on the webpage of Lviv’s mayor, Lviv accepts the largest number of Ukrainians from the war zone; there are more than 200,000 of them for today. For many of my students, it is an unresolved moral dilemma to help or to learn.”

Ukrainians see the devastation wrought by the Russian attack on their homes, their country and their people. There is no return to normalcy when everything around them has changed so dramatically even as institutions are reestablished.

Related link: The Cost of War in Ukraine Affects Everyone, Even Students

‘Where No More Apricots Grow’ Is Where Russia Starts

In her poem “Apricots of Donbas,” Ukrainian poet Lyuba Yakimchuk writes about the effects the Russian occupation has had on her beloved country: “Where no more apricots grow, Russia starts.”

Yakimchuk faced the sounds of air raid sirens, the loss of safety and the loss of her home. In 2014,  the Russians invaded northeast Ukraine and razed her family home.

“Do you know what the beginning of air raid sirens means?” Anastasiia enquired in her war journal. “The russian missiles are launched and then there are two options. They might be shot down by the air defense system or they will land on the ground. You never know exactly in what region and what buildings exactly [are their] targets. 

“In the case of attacking [the] military range [near Lviv], some missiles were shot down but the other shot down the target. As a result, 35 people were killed (among them was the father of my UCU colleague), and 134 were injured (among them was a lieutenant from my husband’s team). My husband is alive but still can’t sleep. [He] has almost constant stomach pain and uncontrollable anxiety.”

For Anastasiia, the homes hit by indiscriminate Russian bombing are not abstract. They have the faces of loved ones on them; the blood of fellow Ukrainians stains the doorsteps and streets.

“This night, the air defense system didn’t defend and Lviv was bombarded,” Anastasiia said. “It has happened for the first time within these 22 days, and not the last time I suppose. [Russian] occupiers are losing their positions on the front, thus the only thing they can do to launch missiles at us, a lot of missiles. As we saw in Mariupol, 100 missiles were enough to level the city to the ground.” 

Still, the people of Ukraine are helping those in greater need. In Anastasiia’s case, she ended her war journal with a plea to help the animals dying from starvation in the Micholayev Zoo. As Anastasiia wrote, “You need [to] just buy a ticket online; the money will help to buy food for the animals.”

Jaclyn Maria Fowler is an adventurer, a lover of culture and language, a traveler, and a writer. To pay for her obsessions, she works as Chair of the English Department and is a full professor at the University. Dr. Fowler earned a Doctorate in Education from Penn State and an MFA in Creative Writing from Wilkes University. She is the author of the novel "It is Myself that I Remake" and of the creative nonfiction book "No One Radiates Love Alone."

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