There is no shame in cleaning up the manure. It is a shame to lose a loved one: how an 18-year-old girl was forced to become the head of the family

Last year in April, 17-year-old Mariia Vdovychenko told hromadske about the phenomenon of a Russian filtration camp. It was set up by Russians on the outskirts of Mariupol. The girl's father came out of it barely alive.

After the publication, enemies started texting Mariia. They threatened her and tried to hack her bank accounts. They accused her of inventing fakes, because there is no occupation and no filtering, and the Russians are not killing anyone. They texted that she was 30 years old, an actress, and a mother of two. They threatened to kill her. After that, the girl stopped telling journalists where she was.

We talked on the phone. About a year after leaving Mariupol, new losses, trials, and struggles. And about the forced growing up.

“I am losing my mom. I can't help her”

When Mariia was in the 6th grade, her mother fell ill. Her legs were failing. Doctors shrugged their shoulders: “Something with nerves. Take some valerian”. And then her mom couldn't get out of bed because she was dizzy. She was unable to eat. The diagnosis was A complex neuralgic disease accompanied by diffuse peripheral nerve disorderspolyneuropathy and An autoimmune disease of the nervous systemmultiple sclerosis with nerve damage throughout the body. As a result, the patient may experience muscle weakness, dizziness, impaired coordination, unsteadiness of gait, and other symptoms.

Mariupol doctors did not take up the treatment, saying cynically: “It's a living corpse, prepare for the worst, there's a funeral home over there.”

At first, her relatives were worried, but later they accepted that she would not recover.

“They offered to get her admitted to an institution. Even my grandmother, my mother's mother, gave up. Only my father fought. He loved his wife very much and made himself and us believe that she could be saved,” Mariia recalls. “I helped: I learned to cook and to get my first-grade sister Nelia ready for school and do her homework with her at the age of 12.”

Once, a man called the rescuers to take his wife to the hospital because the ambulance refused. He quit his job at the factory and became a loader. The free schedule allowed him to take better care of his beloved wife. He found other doctors and trusted their methods. They “restarted” the woman's nervous system – and it worked!

The woman walked to the 2021 school assembly, which was hosted by her daughter Marusia, the school president and future gold medalist, on her own two feet. She stood through the entire event, took pictures of her daughters, and managed to get home on her own. How happy everyone was! The mother was able to cook and make Ukrainian jewelry with her daughters. They loved it so much! The family again became a place of warmth and cordiality, where parents take care of their children, and they can plunge into the serenity of their world.

But in February, a full-scale invasion began. In March 2022, a Russian bomb blew up the fifth floor of the building where the Vdovychenkos lived. In their apartment on the third floor, the ceiling crumbled and windows were broken. The women were screaming in horror as if they were falling into the abyss together with the house. Nelia, the youngest daughter, was thrown against the wall by the blast wave. The girl was hit hard. Her mother was so afraid for her that she did not feel her legs again. The father and Mariia dragged her to the basement, hugging her from both sides.

They were forced to stay in this shelter for two weeks in hunger, almost always in the dark, under constant bombardment. Due to stress, the woman's heart stopped twice. The girl remembers her icy hand, the despair in her father's eyes, who had always been calm, and the snake-like cold inside her: “I'm losing my mom. I can't help her.” But her father resuscitated her: he performed heart massage and artificial respiration.

“He didn't want to let her go, and he didn't,” Mariia exhales into the phone, “We couldn't do it, we stood up for everyone, even our cat. And the neighbors wanted to strangle him. Because he annoyed them by meowing, wanting to eat, and going to the toilet. But my dad said no: he was our family.”

I can hear Casper the cat meowing on the phone. He survived and is now with the girl.

After leaving the city, the family stood in line for two days to get to the filtration camp. It was the only way to get to the territory controlled by Ukraine.

Mariia's mother was freezing, fainting, and the Russians did not allow her to get out of the car.

“My mother did not undergo filtration because she did not move at all. She was numb. And my father was beaten so badly that he could barely get into the car. He could hardly see anything but continued to drive. After 27 Russian checkpoints, we got to Zaporizhzhia,” Mariia recalls.

She brought a dried-up piece of bread to the city, which she could not eat in the basement. She really wanted to. But she was afraid because it was the last one. And her mom, her dad, her sister, and their cat wanted to eat as well...

And when she entered the store in Dnipro, she started to tremble in shock.

“There was food there. A lot of it. Apples of different varieties. And the people were so calm. It was so wild. I immediately remembered our basement, where we used to pour water into a bowl of canned food and crumble bread. And that was for the whole family. And in the end, there was nothing left,” after her experience, Mariia always carries at least a few sweets or cookies in her pocket.

She dialed the number of her deceased father

In Dnipro, doctors diagnosed her father with optic nerve damage. The surgery had to be done immediately. But no one in the city could take care of it because of the flow of wounded from the front. So the family went to the west of Ukraine. They traveled at random from village to village, asking travelers who could help them. In Lviv Oblast, Mariia finished the 11th grade. Eventually, the family moved to Poland.

“But neither there nor later in Germany did we find a place for a long time. We had difficulties with restoring our documents, or with housing. And, of course, with my parents' health. My mother became worse, she could not take care of herself, and in the summer my father went blind and could not help her. I left school (in Poland, school education lasts 12 years – ed.) and found a part-time job. Even though we received payments as refugees, it was not enough to buy medicines,” she says.

Mariia was hired by a rural farmer to feed chickens and ducks and take care of cows. In particular, to clean out the manure.

I asked her if she had ever done anything like this before. A city girl with good English, who played the bandura and was preparing to enter the University of Internal Affairs.

“No. Never. But when life forces you to, you adapt and learn. I had the experience of cleaning a church in Mariupol, which I visited as a volunteer. And in Poland, I decided that even if a pipe with feces bursts, I would clean it up. And it's not a shame. It's a shame to lose a loved one. It is a shame to sit back and cry. You have to fight and move on.”

Before the great war, the father was the leader of the family: he earned money, took care of his wife, and directed who should do what. After the shelling of the house in Mariupol, he ordered us to go to the basement and forced the door open because people in the basement didn’t let the Vdovychenkos in. He decided to save the family and took them out of the city in the fire.

“Dad was the pivot on which everything was based. And even when he lost his sight, he was focused and serious. He did not show that he was in pain. He looked at me with unseeing eyes, but I realized that he saw through me. He began to feel my soul, my emotional state. He said: ‘I will always help. I am always there for you.’ And he supported me with adult, wise advice,” says Mariia.

Her whole story is emotionally even, and you can feel a certain self-control. But not when she talks about her father's death. He died in the winter: his heart stopped. At the age of 48.

“I do not accept this. It is impossible for me. My world was already half destroyed, and at that moment it was falling apart. Recently, the handle on my door broke (the family returned to Ukraine in December – ed.). I remembered that my dad was so good at fixing them. I thought: I'll call him now, and he'll tell me how to fix it. I dialed the number. And suddenly I hear the phone ringing in the drawer. I have no one to call... No one,” shewhispers bitterly.

I will take whatever life offers

After her father's death, her mother became even worse: she had pain all over her body, panic attacks, and couldn't walk or put a spoon to her lips. Her only dream every night is to wake up in the morning and see her daughters. She is still afraid that she will not live to see them, and so she acts as if she is saying goodbye to them.

Mariia's sister, Nelia, had an epileptic seizure in the basement of Mariupol. Since then, her condition has worsened. She has withdrawn into herself, barely saying a few words a day. Only her drawings show her state of mind: they contain darkness, blood, and terrible pictures she saw in her hometown. She and her mother need treatment. “They need to let Mariupol go,” Mariia sighs.

But she needs to let it go as well. She admits that she has not spoken about all her traumatic experiences. She is not ready yet. But she talks about dreams. In them, she sees the intact Mariupol and those who are no longer alive. And suddenly, before her eyes, it all crumbles into ashes. The dead die again. She wakes up to her screams, and the ghosts of the dead are next to her in the darkness. They are in the exact positions and states in which they died. But now she has no time to take care of herself. Although there are problems. She has lost weight from 55 kg to 45 kg, she almost developed A mental eating disorderanorexia, and her head is spinning.

“I have an appetite, there is food on the table, but I can't swallow even a bite: I am anxious and afraid. I am very worried about situations that I cannot handle. Sometimes I want to howl and scream in despair. Once, my mom couldn't breathe, and the ambulance took forever to come,” says Mariia.

Now the main task for her is not to lose her mom. To do whatever it takes to get her back on her feet.

“It's my mom. Even at 40, I will be her little Marusia. Her nervous system is not working now, so my mom is getting closer to death every day. And I am not ashamed to ask for help. I meet different people on my way, I don't divide them into good and bad. Only those who understand the situation and those who do not. I'm not the kind of person who can be pushed into a corner. And if I find myself there, I will scrape myself out of it. Even before the war, I was a purposeful, fighting person.

But, like all children, I lived in a bubble created by my parents: I was concerned with school, volunteering, and music. But now life demands more responsibility from me. And I will take everything it offers me. I will use all the chances. If I have to go to the end of the world, I will,” sheassures.

In late May, she was contacted by people who were ready to help her move to Finland for a month or two. They offer therapy for her mother there. It's not the whole course, just the beginning, but Mariia is very excited: her mother will be examined by specialists, and perhaps they will start all the body systems to work like clockwork. She will also look for treatment options for Nelia there.

I ask Mariia when she felt the burden of adulthood and whether she misses her old self.

“No, I don't miss the carefree girl I used to be. I have undergone a certain transformation, and it is for the better. Me before the invasion and me now are completely different people. Starting with my inner fulfillment and ending with my actions, daily schedule, and responsibilities. I want to make my dad proud, I want to fulfill his will. He always said: ‘You have to become a decent person’. This meant having a good education and being able to use it, having the integrity of soul, and the ability to communicate with people and help them.

I can't call what I've been through a burden. It is a duty. Yes, every person grows up gradually, but this happened to me suddenly. Of course, it was hard to accept it and I didn't really want to. I felt heavy inside, even despair. But this was not the despair of the Mariupol basement, where bombs were falling around us, grown men were committing suicide, dogs were dragging children's corpses, and rats were running around us. There I prayed for a quick death for myself and my family. It was really hell. But having survived it, I simply cannot give up. I have no right to. The Lord does not give a person trials that they cannot cope with. So, He needs me alive. I don't know the whole plan, but I have to save my mom and Nelia.”

You can help Mariia Vdovychenko by following the details:

5375411203167700 (monobank)

vdovi4enk@gmail.com (PayPal)