It is a tradition (or so I’m told) that the weekend/Sunday after (Orthodox) Easter is “Parent’s Day,” though in practice it’s more like the first day of a Parent’s Week. On this day (or during the week) it is customary for people to visit the graves of their parents, grandparents and other deceased relative, during which time they will clean up the grave sites and leave small snacks (candy mostly). This, of course, is a way to honor their ancestors, but there’s a practical side to it too. Cemeteries in Ukraine are not like those in the US, which usually have programs to maintain the grounds. That’s not the case in Ukraine. At best, only a small portion of the area is maintained in any way, and those are usually the sectors with the highest profile and wealthiest grave sites. For everyone else, it’s more like a vacant lot only with grave markers.

This weekend is the weekend after Easter, and it’s the first Parent’s Day for which Rodion knew that his mother was dead. Last year at this time, we didn’t know anything. It was still hoped that Inna was somewhere and just unable to reach out to anyone; we didn’t know until much later that she had been killed by this time. Even after this news was known, Rodion wasn’t told about his mother’s death; that only happened a couple months ago. Additionally, for a long time, there wasn’t any information about what had been done with Inna’s remains. Baba Katya was very diligent, though, and was able to find which mass grave she’d been placed in and even learned which plot.

A couple months ago, Katya also arranged to have Inna’s grave site cleaned up, get a proper marker installed, and had some artificial grass laid to give the site a more dignified look. (Although Katya paid for this upfront, Viktoria was insistent on us paying her back.) Given the circumstances and the fact that most of the bodies in that grave area will never be better identified or claimed by family, this gesture makes it all the more poignant.

Although I think Rodion has been here to visit already, this was his first Parent’s Day visit. He and Baba Katya cleaned things up a bit, left some fresh flowers and put that bad of sweets there on the cross. You can’t see a lot of the area, but you can tell that this is not a well-tended (or, probably, visited) cemetery.