Babusya

“Aaaahhhh!” the babusya cried, throwing her arms wide and wrapping them around her granddaughter.[…]“Mary, this is my babusya.”

When Father Hryhorii first arrived, the old babusyas, ignorant of the way religious affairs were ordered, thanked God that the church was not sealed up or blown into the air.[…]‘Who are you going to see, sir?’ A babusya, who was sitting near to him on the bus asked, ‘Perhaps your family. I know everyone in the village, I see you are not a local.’

I thought we’d just take my babusya to visit relatives in Vinnytsia and then, after stopping by my dad’s parents’ house in Snizhne, we would return to Tallinn in time to see the final episodes of Dynasty.[…]I didn’t cry even though as I buried my babusya, I was also burying my secret hopes of visiting her and staying permanently.

As my mother told me this story, I always just assumed that my babusya gave my mother the doll to keep her, a small, bedridden child, occupied, but my mother always emphasized the importance of the doll and how it was given to her to help her get better.

What keeps him going is the reaction he gets from the people he helps, the sweet, old babusyas he delivers medication to, the kids in the children’s ward, injured from shelling, whose eyes lit up when they saw the toys he brought them.