Dodge the Rubble
Repeated experience should not take away significance. Yet, too often, a familiar weariness accompanies the reminder of news. Being reminded of a task you can’t seem to get to, an upcoming meeting, or a war that threatens to fade into a steady rhythm of normality. It’s easy to let such things sink into a forgetful cycle of routine. It’s unfortunate.
Bucha is a city in the Kyiv Oblast, mirroring the village I live in across the greater Kyiv metropolitan area. I hadn’t even thought about it before the war until I was delivered the news of its suffering.
In March of 2022, Russia invaded from Belarus and carried out what became known as the Bucha Massacre - 458 bodies, including nine children under the age of eighteen.
Assault, rape, murder, genocide.
A friend’s church congregation largely came from this area. During a visit to our friends, the scorched civilian vehicles were our first welcome.
“Ukraine. Irpin. Destroyed civilian vehicles during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
This automotive graveyard consists of vehicles found in the towns of Bucha and Irpin, near Kyiv. People who were attempting to save their children and their own lives tried to escape from the occupied towns and were executed by the Russian aggressors. They perished in their own vehicles. You can observe bullet holes and shrapnel marks on the vehicle bodies.”
Painted sunflowers imitated the intrinsic hopefulness I write about in “Wash.”. Cars on the road rushed past us as we stood, observing the cemetery of machines. A still void beside a flow of life.
What awaited us in the center of the city was more destruction. Apartments, churches, and statues were all bruised and battered by the hands of offenders. During our walk, we came to the courtyard of an apartment block and met a grandmother who had lost her home to a missile strike.
On the outskirts of the city, a family from our friend’s church welcomed us for a hearty lunch and shared their firsthand account of the invasion. Their garden, teeming with tomatoes, cucumbers, and berries, was surrounded by scattered artillery fragments—residual fragments of missiles, guns, and bullets. Between the gate and the open front door slept a litter of kittens.
Being on the outskirts had placed them on the early line of defense. The husband and wife recounted how the men of the village rallied when they heard of the approaching forces. As the sounds of conflict closed in, the women gathered inside. The wife told us how, when a Russian soldier tried to intimidate the women at the front door, she picked up an axe, ready to kill him.
Pain had been circulating since the beginning of the invasion through stories and the news. And for those less fortunate, long before that. In neighboring countries, pain of a different sort: political refugees, people living in territories where their own language isn’t even taught, disappearing faces and names.
“Love your Ukraine.
Love her… in a fierce time,
In the last, difficult moment,
pray to the Lord for her.”
“In the spring of 2022, Russian forces fired upon the monument with small arms, damaging both the pedestal and the bust itself” (War Up Close).
It’s easy to let loss become a forgetful cycle of routine, and it’s far simpler to allow grief to foster numbness. But in doing so, one overlooks a key component.
It is when we see, and speak, and feel that we are shocked into the reality of being the one forced to wield the axe and face an intruder; to dodge the painful rubble of permanent change.
Numbness cannot be the balm for pain, because eventually, one must move on. To rebuild, we must feel.
