(Image: Maidan Square, Kyiv, Ukraine, May 2019. Image taken by J.M. Macchiavelli)

Firstly, let me say that this piece will be entirely nonfiction. Something I rarely do over the course of my writing, but given how closely these events impact me and someone I love deeply, I feel it is only right.

Her name is Sasha. She’s strongly against social media, namely her likeness being used, due to Russia and other entities using people’s appearances to pose as them for numerous reasons, including blackmail. Out of respect, I don’t post pictures of her anywhere because it breaches that trust, and I wouldn’t want her to come to harm. It’s a different set of rules she has to live by, in Ukraine.

We’ve been dating, long distance now for several years. Our anniversary is coming up in May. I planned on proposing to her. I have an idea of where to do so, how the events will play out, and the process we will need to take to get her Visa approved to be here in the U.S., and all of that. But home means a lot to her, and she feels like she’s abandoning it if she does so. Still, in spite of this, we’ve talked many times about how we intend for this to happen.

I’ve walked the streets of her hometown, Poltava, her mitten in my leather-clad grip as we trekked a winter wonderland one night while I was visiting in December. The joy she had for something as mundane as snow (for a Minnesotan at least) warmed me more than the layers of clothing, or the drinks we’d shared.

We’d trekked through the mall in Kharkov, watching people skate at its center while perusing the wares, priced and displayed with Cyrillic letters, leaving me oblivious to the item itself she looked at starry-eyed while nudging me if I’d buy it, the price point in Hryvnia seeming insanely high…until one converted the currency.

We rode the shuttle back to Poltava that night and watched a movie they were playing. I didn’t know the language, and foreign subtitles didn’t save me, but the context wasn’t lost on me, and both of us were laughing at the same moments we saw. In spite of this cultural barrier, there was common ground, I’d found between me and this foreign country.

Kiev we’d visited numerous times. The food was second to none, I found, leaving me oblivious to the wondrous dish I’d actually eaten, since it was in Cyrillic once again, and I failed to remember what specifically was in it. The scenery of the riverfront by the Dnieper lay before us as we walked the promenade: a particular rising street likely to give mountain goats shin splints I imagine. We walked by artwork along this river front, apartments and construction taking place in dizzying effort rendering a picturesque landscape splashed with industrialism.

She’d get the same giddy smile on her face with a Starbucks in her hand that I’d seen people here do while we paced along, taking in the early summer day together. She likes McDonald’s, and was thrilled that Poltava has one, while bummed Starbucks is hard to come by. We’d buy the most succulent, sweet strawberries from a street vendor, and devour the box all at once. She’d scold me for not eating more of the top part of the strawberry, that I was leaving “half the berry” uneaten. We’d get into an Uber and hear the radio playing Nirvana, then Okean Elzy, while I was half glued to the views out the window, the other half glued to this woman who made my heart race.

After Aaron died, Sasha has been here for me, the best she’s able to. More accurately, we’ve been there for each other. Her travel venture had to be tabled due to Covid 19, restrictions and overall travel itself made that pursuit no longer feasible. She worried about the future, and disheartened, moved back to Poltava to be with her mom and grandma (and her parrot, Afonya).

She’s the most supportive person I’ve ever known. She ceaselessly supports my writing pursuits while I constantly doubt mine. We trade off being the dreamer and the realist in tandem, rounding out nearly every facet of our lives in harmony in this regard. We keep each other connected to the present while also striving for better.

I hoped her and I would meet in Skype recently to figure out how I could get the ball rolling on her Visa, but we only had a short time together, and in recent events, it was more or less to calm her rattled nerves. While I’m sitting at home on a computer, and my neighbors are grumbling about the garbage truck not picking up their trash, Sasha is seeing her world around her in danger. Her parents, friends, extended family…the landmarks she knows, the safety and security that familiarity breeds is rooting her with its intoxicating promise of an unchanging world, and lured her in.

Today, that changed. At least, I think. I can’t get a hold of her, all I can tell is that she received my message on WhatsApp about my request…which was to publish this blog, and to perhaps post a picture of us together. I wanted her permission for this…and I haven’t gotten it yet.

Our mutual friend, Julia, who lives in Poltava also, I reached out to her around the same time. I told her this whole situation is such a nightmare, and I am praying for her, her son David, and that I’m trying to bother our president and congress to step up measures and show solidarity to Ukraine and make this all stop. Her reply was:

Thank you

We are scared to death

I mentioned I was glad to hear from her, and asked if she had anywhere she could head. Her reply, quite contrasting with her usual warm, upbeat demeanor painted a picture of near hysterical dread:

Borders are closed

Nowhere safe

I then mentioned to her if they could trek across the heartland, Poland, Hungary and Romania were all opening and preparing for refugees. I haven’t heard from her since. No mention in regards to Sasha.

If Sasha was at work, it was in the office of UKRNAFTA, in the fields about 60 kilometers east of Poltava, between there and Kharkov. Kharkov came under heavy attack. Poltava was bombed, according to a map.

Is she safe? Is she scared? Does she seek my words to reassure her I’ll do anything I can for her? Is she racked with cold, trekking along the debris-riddled roads to the thrumming booms of warfare all around? Did she cry when she had to let her bird fly free, not able to bring him along on a train or bus, if so?

Or is she laying face down in a pool of blood, an unnecessary civilian casualty in a war that never should have happened? Did she cry out my name, and I failed to be there for her? Did she die afraid and alone?

Would there be anyone left alive who I knew through her, to tell me what happened, or would I forever wonder?

My fears are inconsequential in comparison to hers, but my mind churns with worry, playing out scenarios of “what if” at inexhaustible volume. The powerlessness and frustration consumes me into near rage, depression, dread and complete numbness. Those times I can’t channel it all. The dam broke and it’s funneling out of a straw. I get on Twitter (which I HATE) and beseech politicians to do more than just platitudes and gestures. It’s all I can do, short of flying to Poland, grabbing a weapon, and donning the blue and yellow on my arm…and I would, for her.

The people of Ukraine are enduring. They have incredible strength in the face of adversity they’ve been subjected to. They have a steadfastness and industriousness, with an uncommon capacity for compassion and curiosity. Hearing the stories from locals, having landmarks pointed out to me and being told the significance behind them, it contrasted so starkly to how things are in the U.S., especially Minnesota, it felt.

Their culture wasn’t Russian. It was Ukrainian. It was part Polish, part Cossack, part Lithuanian, part Tatar… over centuries in the making. Woven into this ancestral tapestry was an identity unique to these people living there today, something deeper and more complex than the simple “Russian” stamp people place on them, typically. While they were part of Russia, on and off over a few hundred years, that depreciates their true heritage to simply lump them in with another group of people. Sweden invaded them around the time we were talking about the Renaissance (Sweden also conquered vast areas of Russia, their gene pool today is largely Swedish). Part of southern Ukraine was taken by the Ottoman Empire, Turkey being its capital, right across the Black Sea.

The Holodomor, arguably the darkest page in Ukrainian history, was the act of Stalin reclaiming Ukraine for Russia, back in the early 1930’s. His soldiers tortured and murdered the leaders of resistance in Ukraine, and removed all food from the countries borders, sending it to the major Russian cities instead, inducing an artificial famine on the population. The number of deaths this produced has been hotly disputed.

Ukraine states it was 20 million Ukrainians murdered either by Russian troops or famine. That’s more than all Jews killed in the Holocaust.

Russia to this day claims it was “only” 500,000.

The bones are in catacombs, where Jews and others hid from the Nazis during their invasion. Enough to make them labyrinthine and effective in providing sanctuary, blessed or haunted all the same, by the bones and ghosts of their countrymen.

War and death are not a distant world away for them, like it feels for me. It’s been generational, consistent, and brutal. It’s in their history. This territory has been fought over many times, its fields steeped in bloody events and yet, the people endure and return.

It is this uncommon determination and strength that gives me some small comfort. Sasha has this in her veins, too. She can display tremendous courage, and resolve to face challenges no matter how difficult they seem. But she won’t be spared the horrors of war. This sweet, war-hating, intelligent and gentle person will watch her world around her go up in flames, while the rest of the world sends thoughts and prayers. She’ll be forever changed, and I can’t possibly see how it could be for the better.

Regardless, she has me. Always. Wherever she is. Earth or Heaven.

I pray for you, my love.