By Katia Colitti
I’m seven years old, watching Mom apply her makeup while looking into the pedestal mirror on our kitchen windowsill with an old-fashioned box of solid mascara in hand. A shapely brunette in her late twenties, she has brown eyes, a plump mouth, and a prominent mole on her right cheek.
She rubs the wand in the jet-black color, coats her lashes, blinks, and leans back to check the result. I’m mesmerized. I dream of looking like her. Unfortunately, I’m broad-shouldered and hazel-eyed, with hair trimmed boy-short, a spitting image of my father. I approach her, but she keeps her distance.
“I don’t like to be touched,” she says. “My responsibility is to feed and clothe you. You can’t make me love you.”
My chest contracts. I turn around and slink out.
Mom is born in Donetsk, in the east of Ukraine (then part of the USSR). Her parents’ marriage breaks up right before her birth and neither is interested in caring for Mom. They both quickly find new partners and have other children. Mom is raised by nearby relatives, unloved and abused.
At nineteen, she meets my father at university. She’s desperate to leave the house she grew up in and build her own family. She is not in love, but she tries hard to make it work. They marry and, soon after, I am born. Mom is crushed when my father refuses the job opportunity that would give them a fresh start in another part of the world.
A few years later, Mom leaves my father for someone else. Her life is consumed by caring for her new partner and keeping the peace: he’s volatile and violent, especially when drunk. I live in fear that she would leave me somewhere and not return. The fear is confirmed when, one night, she forgets to pick me up from kindergarten and I spend several anxious hours with the night guard. When my sisters are born, Mom showers them with love. I’m not welcome in this new family, an unmistakable reminder of the life Mom left behind.
I can’t wait to leave.
When, at nineteen, I get an opportunity to study in the United States, I jump on it. It is impossible to relate to other young adults attending the same small New England college. One of a handful of non-locals, I feel too old, weighed down by my family history. I spend all the money I earn from
working two jobs on phone calls to Mom. Mom apologizes for how things were. I want the impossible: a different childhood and her love. Angry and hurt, I withdraw.
Twelve years pass before I return to Ukraine for my middle sister’s wedding. I spot Mom in the crowd greeting our flight. I leave my bag behind in the middle of the busy arrivals hall. The years apart disappear under my feet as I run into her arms. My husband snaps a photo of us holding one another, smiling: Mom’s arms are wrapped tightly around me, our tired faces pressed together.
She’s much older than I remember, and her eyes are sadder, even when she smiles. I take in her sleeveless cream blouse, long blue skirt with small flowers, dark hair tied back in a low ponytail, face glistening from hours of waiting in the summer heat.
Over our two weeks together, we talk a lot. Mom braids my hair, cooks my favorite meals (oladyi, small pancakes with apple slices, and potato pirozhki, savory hand pies filled with mashed potato), and sides with me in small family arguments. The tightness in my chest I hadn’t realized I was holding starts to let up.
When I move to Belgium in 2012, I plan to see Mom often. But, in 2014, Russia’s incursion into the east of Ukraine turns my hometown Donetsk and the surrounding region into an isolated hotbed of violent unrest. Mom and my stepdad lose their life savings. They temporarily move in with my sister in the north of Ukraine, outside the conflict area. It’s not easy, but at least they are safe.
In 2015, I spend months at home nursing a traumatic brain injury. Neither of us can travel to the other, but Mom worries and cheers me on as I recover.
In 2016, we vacation together in the west of Ukraine. One day, as we slowly climb a picturesque hill near our rental house, Mom tells me that she birthed me in silence, too embarrassed to scream even when her eye blood vessels ruptured from pushing. Hearing about my birth is a strange experience. Mostly, I wish I could have been there to comfort her. A few days later, at the end of the vacation, we promise to see each other again soon, not knowing this would be the last time.
In 2017, Mom and my stepdad return to Donetsk to care for my grandmother. In 2022, with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the situation in Donetsk deteriorates further. I start and end every day wondering whether they’re still alive. Mom recounts the atrocities and destruction around her and speaks of her fear of stepping on one of the “petal” bombs scattered everywhere, the lack of running water, and their growing isolation.
One day, explosions blow out their windows. A few weeks later, a rocket destroys their next-door neighbors’ house. Mom sends a few photos and shares that the neighbors’ dog jumped on the owner to protect him, saving the man’s life and receiving a mortal wound in the process. In a chronic state of fear, Mom sleeps on the floor, fully clothed.
As Mom retreats into her own world, so do I. Those years are rough for me too. My path to motherhood ends. One of my three elderly cats dies. Anxiety over another, frail and diabetic one, consumes me. I can’t handle another loss. But none of my heartaches seem worth sharing given what Mom is living through. I feel guilty for being safe. I also feel helpless and angry that they remain in Donetsk. My stepfather forbids any talk of leaving, insisting they wait out the war in their own home.
In May 2023, Mom writes: “I didn’t want to worry you, but my health has seriously deteriorated.” I feel a wave of dread rising in my chest. I call her immediately and learn about her month-long rectal bleeding and the painful diagnostic procedures. I want to be with her, but the war makes it impossible. Even my sister living in the north of Ukraine can’t reach them.
When Mom calls a few days later, I am at a friend’s house. I step into the back yard to take the call. It is sunny and unseasonably warm. She seems small and frail behind her large, old-fashioned glasses. She looks faded, like she’s already being erased. I feel a hot, sharp anger as she recounts having to undergo colon biopsies without anesthesia. There’s no shortage of anesthesia drugs in Donetsk, but the doctor can’t be bothered to administer them. He tells Mom: “These are short procedures, you can manage.” Her screams carry into the hallway where my stepfather waits helplessly.
I want to envelop her in my life force, protect her, take her far away from Donetsk, watch over her as she gets better. I say: “Don’t let them do this again. You’ve got to stand up for yourself.”
Mom’s brown eyes are wide open, eyebrows furrowed: “They found a few bad cells. They want to operate as soon as my cold is better. What do you think?”
I am terrified, but I can’t cry in front of her. I take a deep breath, swallow, and say: “These bad cells—we’ll fight them. The surgery will go well, it’s routine–”
Suddenly, the call drops. My phone, overheated in the sun, shuts off. I throw it into the fridge. The ten minutes that it takes to cool down seem interminable, as I close and open the fridge door every few minutes. As soon as it’s cool enough to turn back on, I see Mom’s message. The text is garbled, but I understand the meaning: “I’ve already told you everything. Let’s speak in a few days.” I call anyway, but she doesn’t answer. I write over the coming two days, but I know she has a cold and am not too alarmed not to hear back.
Then my stepfather writes that they both have COVID-19. He reports having called an ambulance for Mom, now feverish, weak, and confused, refusing to eat. They prescribe fluids and rest. “Nothing more to do,” they say, “just wait out the peak of the COVID infection.”
Two days later, her condition worsens. This time, the ambulance takes Mom away. My stepdad calls the next day to say that Mom has sepsis and they are hoping blood transfusions might save her. I try to keep calm in front of him, but it’s no use. Suddenly, my head is spinning. My feet can’t find the ground and I cry for what feels like hours, wheezing and shaking as huge spasms rock my chest.
The following day, I make the interminably long train journey to the south of France to see my youngest sister who now lives in the area. We are on pins and needles all afternoon as we wait for the news. When my stepdad finally calls in the evening, his voice is thick, and his worsening cough makes us wince. We hold our breath as he recounts that Mom’s “serious but stable.” We know the odds—we’ve spent hours researching “sepsis” online. But we cling to the fact that she’s still fighting and go to sleep.
The next morning, I wake up unsure where I am. In the soft morning light that falls across the room, I see my sister still asleep in her bed. Now I remember.
My sister cries as she wakes up.
“What is it?” I ask.
She sobs: “I dreamt of Mom, young and beautiful. She had lipstick on, her hair made up. She was saying goodbye.”
“It’s just a dream,” I say. “It doesn’t mean anything. Let’s wait for Dad’s call.”
Then her phone rings. I hear my stepfather’s voice, but it’s distant, unrecognizable. “Mom died,” he says. “They did all they could, but the blood transfusions didn’t work, and her heart couldn’t take it. She left us at three in the morning.”
No, no, no, it can’t be. I want to rewind and un-live this moment. I feel like the world stopped, sound and color gone. Like a grenade had gone off next to my ears, and I am flung to the ground, dumbfounded, unable to move.
But I must move. We have trains to catch. Arm in arm, we inch toward the station. My sister’s train leaves first and, suddenly, I’m all alone. My head is spinning. I need to get home.
When I finally arrive in Brussels many hours later and see my husband waiting outside the train station, I run to him, barely seeing through the tears. I press myself against his chest and sob into his shirt. I hear his steady heartbeat. This is something I can hold on to.
As my stepdad fights for his life in intensive care, I helplessly wait for news from local friends who arrange the final rites. Not being able to select Mom’s clothes for the burial, touch her one last time are like blades under my fingernails. Mom’s casket is refused entry into the church during services. Standard procedure for COVID dead. A family friend sends a photo of the casket, impossibly small and upholstered in light blue fabric. The government sends a hazmat crew into our home to eradicate any remnants of COVID. The thought of strangers spraying chemicals on Mom’s clothes and modest but priceless belongings is sickening.
In the months following Mom’s death, I speak with my sisters every day, sometimes for hours. My experience of losing her is different from theirs. The time I had with Mom’s love felt so short, and there was still so much we needed to say. I only had three visits with her in twenty-five years. Her life, and our story, ended so abruptly that it takes months to accept the reality that she’s gone.
My sisters tell me that Mom regretted how she treated me during my childhood, wished we were closer, and was so proud of me. She understood it was her fault and kept trying to move toward me later in life.
Many things were left unsaid between Mom and me. But despite the distance and the old hurts, we were building a road back to one another. Nearly a decade of war preceding her death took so much from us: the time we could have spent together, the confidences we could have shared, and the love we could have nurtured. And now there would never be another hug, another embroidery lovingly made just for me, another excited report on a new recipe Mom had discovered.
When I talk with my stepfather, he tells me he found the identifier tag from the hospital where I was born, saved among Mom’s treasured possessions along with my photos and her diary from our early days together. I remember how, when I needed important government paperwork and we only had one chance to obtain it, she waited in front of the agency building all night, alone, to secure our spot in line. In the morning, she mentioned confronting a pack of stray dogs. She was afraid but didn’t move; she knew what she needed to do, for me.
Is it possible that Mom loved me more than I realized?
Who I am has been shaped by Mom in so many ways. As I frantically record the books, movies, and songs Mom liked in the aftermath of her death, I realize how nearly everything that influenced my early years came from her. Her favorite writers (Bulgakov, Christie, O. Henry) are
mine too. Like her, I read magazines back to front, rub cucumber peel on my face to moisturize, and love black tea with apple slices.
For months after Mom’s death, I look in the mirror without really seeing myself. One day, I pause and study my reflection. Suddenly, I see a resemblance to Mom around my eyes. Not only the sadness that she also carried, but also the angle of my eyebrows and the downslope of my upper lids. Later, my father remarks: “You look just like your mother. And you have all her mannerisms.”
My childhood has always weighed heavily on me. I’ve often wondered whether I would ever be able to let some of the old hurts go. As I start to make sense of my and Mom’s story, I see more love and connection than I thought was there. And, for the first time, I see the possibility of setting down some of the weight I’ve been carrying.