This story is one of millions of stories of love, fear, hatred and a long road to understanding and unity.
This story is my personal experience, my sleepless nights, unread messages, farewells and reunions, exposed nerves and deep depression.
I’m the wife of a military serviceman, and I didn’t choose this path.
The Russians chose it for me when they attacked my country.
My husband went to defend the city on the first day of the full-scale invasion, and I’ve been waiting ever since.
I remember his adrenaline and burning eyes during the first six months, first when he became an assaulter, then a special forces soldier.
He studied hard and gained experience, but his school was on the battlefield, where there is no room for error.
I remember his first loss – a young and sunny guy with the gait of a ballroom dancer.
Then he had his name tattooed on his back and said it would be his personal memorial.
I’m proud of him and hate him at the same time.
I still can’t accept his choice and the situation he put our family in by going to this war.
I’ll tell you the truth, it’ll be ugly and sometimes disgusting, but the truth deserves to be heard.
He and the family
We have two wonderful daughters who have been growing up without their father for three years.
Sometimes he appears in their lives, but these appearances are rare, and it becomes very hard for all of us.
It’s difficult for to understand that the girls have already grown up, that the older one already has a boyfriend and a personal life, and the younger one has a personal opinion and thorns, like a classic teenager.
He gets upset that tickling no longer makes her laugh, but rather annoys her, that a kinder from the store doesn’t make her happy, that her mobile is her best friend, that she doesn’t want to play a two-joystick console, but wants to go to Bershka and order sushi.
At such moments, his eyes become empty, and a look of sadness and fear appears in them: “Where are you, my little sunshine, daddy’s princess, where did you go while I was freezing in the woods and eating once every two days?”
He can’t accept the fact that the girls are growing up without him, so he goes to the balcony to smoke.
He can sit there for hours and then we don’t bother him, we just change the ashtray.
When he returns home after a long rotation, we teach him anew to flush the toilet, because where he is, there is a pit which everyone uses in turn. Or there is nothing at all, just a shovel and an empty bottle.
And the reflex to flush the toilet simply atrophied.
He also smokes in the toilet, and this makes our neighbor woman mad, and he shakes the ash into the sink, which I silently wash after each of his smoking breaks.
When he comes home, he sleeps with his clothes on for the first few days. It makes me so angry, I bought new bedding, I waited for him to finally take a bath and stretch his tired body on clean sheets.
But he doesn’t go to the bathroom, he doesn’t want to wash, he doesn’t even take off his thermal underwear. And he sleeps in pants, which have not been washed off from blood stains and mud.
And for the first few days, he goes to the store wearing boots with stains from his brother-in-arms’ brains. And he will wear them until he comes out of his coma.
He will only wash his own plate and cup, and still hasn’t learned how to use a dishwasher.
He doesn’t see a loose kitchen cabinet door and a curtain rod that should have been repaired a long time ago. Our friends say he needs a doctor, but he won’t listen to them. He says that all this will be done when he returns, if he ever returns.
He and I
I once chose him because he was the kindest and most compassionate person of all.
He saved stray animals, he adored children, he loved music and dreaming.
We laughed a lot together because we had the same sense of humor.
He went to war but continued to be my love. I went to see him in Kramatorsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kryvyi Rih and Kherson.
Our meetings were filled with romance. First, it’s a pleasant wait while I’m traveling to him by train. Or by some cold crate, or by changing buses.
When there was no railway connection with Kramatorsk, I tried to find all possible options, got on all available volunteer cars from Lviv to see and be with him at least once every few months. To hug, to breathe in his sweet smell.
Speaking of smell. All soldiers from the contact line smell the same. One day, a guy came into a coffee shop in Lviv with a big bag. He was very exhausted and tired. He was obviously from the war, and he had to go further, and he was just biding his time. The guy took off his winter pixelated jacket and hung it on the back of a chair. I moved closer and couldn’t stop breathing, because my husband smelled the same way for the last few years. He noticed, smiled, and asked, “How long haven’t you seen each other?”
I burst into tears and walked away.
He met me at train stations with flowers, we ate in cafes and nightclubs, rented beautiful and ugly apartments and made love. As if for the first and last time.
Time passed and tender messages began to change to “++”, our meetings became less frequent, as he had more and more work.
The Russians advanced aggressively.
He went to “work” to Zaporizhzhia on September 1.
At that time, I took the younger daughter to a new school, the older one went to university, I looked after my father, and soon buried him, bought a Christmas tree and gifts for the New Year.
He came home on St. Nicholas Day, but not to celebrate. He came for a day to bury his comrades.
I sat with him in the kitchen, he took off his socks and warmed his feet on the warm floor. Leaning against the wall, he was crying, and I was sitting next to him and didn’t know how to calm him down. Then I simply began to peel off some black spots from the skin on his head. It was earth mixed with caked blood.
It was sleeting on the Field of Mars, and an air raid siren was wailing.
A flag to the widow and children, shots to the sky.
The piercing wind was blowing and we were all shivering with cold and grief.
In the coffin was someone with whom my husband had walked shoulder to shoulder, slept in the same bag and shared something very personal. They talked about raising children, about cars where children’s bicycles could fit, and about their youth. What else can two men talk about on the third night, during the calm moments on the front line?? Knowing that they could die at any moment.
One died, and the other survived. But the one who survived was no longer like my husband. He was a man who saw death and looked it straight in the eye.
After that, I heard a lot of diagnoses and advice from friends and colleagues.
“Survivor complex, PTSD, fatigue, addiction.” I have dozens of contacts of good specialists and a bunch of downloaded books on my mobile, but we haven’t used any.
He got another injury in Kherson. I was very afraid of that operation, for some reason the woodlands of Zaporizhzhia were not as scary to me as the islands in the Kherson region. I stopped sleeping and could hardly eat, and on the third or fourth day of their withdrawal, I received a call from an unknown number.
As they say, those who have been in my shoes will understand.
Soldiers’ wives hate unknown numbers, because you may hear the most terrible words from the other end of the line. He’s alive, and he’s in hospital, without his belongings and a phone, but with legs and arms. And it was comforting.
That summer was the most hellish summer in my life. Hospitals changed like a carousel, his physical condition seemed to improve, but the moral state was getting worse and worse.
One of his fallen comrades was preparing for a wedding the day before. He chose a wedding cake via video call, discussed guest lists and menus.
“I couldn’t save him,” he said every day, “I had to do something, I tried.”
“You pulled out three, you saved three more, you pulled out whoever you could,” I repeated every day. But he wouldn’t listen to me.
Alcohol appeared in his life very suddenly, but it created a lot of problems for us. He thought it was the only way he could fall asleep, the doses became larger, and he had to drink a whole bottle of whiskey to fall asleep and not have nightmares.
And at night, he would tell me to pack my backpack and go out, hide me from drones and guide me through mined fields.
Did it scare me? Yes, very much, but I was more afraid that the situation would get out of my control, that the children could see his condition and his weaknesses, that I couldn’t help him, and we were all going downhill together.
We almost stopped talking about personal things, we talked about his diagnoses, doctors, the society that made him more and more angry day by day, about dodgers and those who lead the country to defeat.
He stopped seeing the point in the things that used to inspire him, he stopped wanting to live, he just existed in space and time, and I was hitting the wall of silence and detachment.
“Would you like to live in a private house when you come back?” I asked him, trying to at least somehow plan our future, which was becoming more and more unclear to me with each passing day.
“I would just like to survive this war,” he answered.
Medical cannabis was able to dampen his fire a little, sleep improved, he began to have an appetite and some minimal desires.
We started going to the forest, walking the dogs, doing some household chores. But the hospital vacation was coming to an end, every morning I woke up and thought that this day was bringing me closer to parting with him.
And the better he got, the less time we had together.
How could I let him go again into that black hole, which, if it didn’t devour him completely, would suck out his soul, all his strength and desires, all his joy and love? And maybe I won’t be able to get him back a second time.
I’ve read a lot of advice, I’m in a lot of groups of women who are waiting. And they say there that their husbands do not bring the war home, that they save their wives’ nerves and sleep by not telling them anything.
They take beautiful photos together, romantic and touching videos for social media and write beautiful stories about love with a soldier.
Sometimes I’m jealous, very jealous of those women, when I think about all that our family has been through and that I don’t have such a beautiful story.
And sometimes I don’t believe them, because no matter how hard you try not to bring the war home, it’ll creep into any small crack. Your husband will bring its stench on his coat, in his bag with military stuff and in his head.
And if you are not ready for this, the war will destroy your relationships, tear apart any healthy and strong family, and scatter the ashes over the fields.
I hate to let him go again, and he hates to go back there again.
We are tired and exhausted partners, who have just begun to feel the right way in the dark, but he’s already packing his backpack, and I stay to live the life for both of us.
Author: Kateryna Lisova
On the cover is an illustrative photo of Julia Kochetova
Supported by the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine. The views of the authors do not necessarily reflect the official position of the U.S. Government.
