When I went to school this afternoon for a weekly group meeting, I was confused. Normally Vasya is waiting to meet me. Always on time, always motivated to work, he rarely misses a meeting for anything. So when I couldn’t find him or any other group members I got confused. I went to one of the classrooms where a teacher I work with was. There I found Alexandra, one of the group members who seemed quite shy and uncomfortable with my usual cheeriness and questions about where everyone was “hiding.” It was obvious to her that I didn’t know what everyone else knew. Vasya’s mother died this weekend she told me. From accidental carbon monoxide poisoning. She was young, and now Vasya is home alone.
His mother was a cleaner at the school, and the last time I saw her was in her hurry to get to the produce stand. They are a very poor family, and Vasya worked all this summer in the resort town Odessa in Ukraine to make money to support the family. In the summer was the only time I couldn’t get him to commit to any camps or programs, because he was just too busy with work—be it for someone else or in their own garden. Now his life is going to get that much tougher.
When I walked home I saw two of the girls from the group I was supposed to meet. When I sat down on the bench outside of our apartment building to chat a little bit, it became apparent that while this is a town tragedy, and that everyone is talking about it, that I don’t believe it’s a rarity here. I remembered that one of the girls I was talking to, that her mother was the town doctor. I remember writing about how it shook the town when she died last year. She was 40.
Life is tough, and we don’t know when things are going to ride smooth or go for a spin. However, what I do know is that today my heart aches for this mother's life cut short and for her son, who already knows how tough life can be.
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