In February we received a few requests for evacuations from a city near the front line. At one of the houses was a babushka that was bedfast. Her daughter had asked us to bring her out from her city, which has been slowly getting more and more dangerous to live in. She refused to leave with us that day.
A few weeks ago someone else stopped in again and tried to convince her to evacuate, and that time she didn’t want to be evacuated either, but said she would come out if her daughter came along to get her.
So last week, her daughter took a train all the way from the Carpathians in western Ukraine to get her. Early in the morning when we drove in to get her mom, the city was much more destroyed than our first visit. We could see drones flying and hear explosions nearby. We carried her out as quickly as possible, and left the dangerous city behind. We brought her to a hospital to get cleaned up, and met another one of her daughters. On the drive back to our city, I was glad to see they were all in good spirits.
But the story doesn’t always end how we hope it does. This past weekend the babushka that we evacuated passed away. It was so sad to hear, she had been out for barely a week. It’s hard to understand, but at least she wasn’t alone, and the family could be together with their mother again, if only for a short time.