Across town was the kind of closure that Trubchaninova wants so badly. At a cemetery, two 82-year-old women rose from a bench and crossed themselves as the now-familiar white van arrived carrying another casket.
The women, Neonyla and Helena, sing at funerals. They have performed at 10 since the Russians withdrew. "The biggest pain for a mother is to lose her son," Neonyla said. "There is no word to describe it."
Like Trubchaninova, they hadn't fled ahead of the Russians. This is our land, they said.
They joined the priest at the foot of the grave. Two men with handfuls of tulips attended, along with a man with cap in hand.
"That's it," a gravedigger said when the exhausted-looking priest was finished.
Another man with a gold-ink pen wrote basic details on a temporary cross. It was for a woman who had been killed by shelling as she cooked outside. She was 69.
