‘It’s not the end’: The children who survived Bucha

The coffin was made from pieces of a closet. In a darkened basement under a building shaking from the bombardment of war, there were few other options.

Six-year-old Vlad watched as his mother was carried out of the shelter last month and to the yard of a nearby home. The burial was hurried and devastating.

Now Russian forces have withdrawn from Bucha after a monthlong occupation, and Vlad’s father, Ivan Drahun, dropped to his knees at the foot of the grave.

He reached out and touched the dirt near his wife Maryna’s feet. “Hi, how are you?” he said during the visit last week. “I miss you so much. You left so soon. You didn’t even say goodbye.”

The boy also visits the grave, placing on it a juice box and two cans of baked beans. Amid the stress of war, his mother barely ate. The family still doesn’t know what illness caused her death. They, much like their town, barely know how to move on.