“I laughed when they told me how my funeral was prepared.” This soldier’s family received his death notification

The military enlistment office said that the coffin and cross would be provided by the state. The family had already bought cookies and candy for the wake and had arranged for funeral towels with the priest.

Olha ordered a mourning basket of flowers with a heart for her husband's funeral. They decided to buy wreaths and make kolyvo on the day of the funeral. Olha's grandmother gave 32-year-old Andrii a place in the cemetery that she had long ago chosen for herself.

Hrytsaichuk was the first soldier in the village whose family received a death notification. Therefore, the head of the community even ordered a grader to be brought in to level the pits on the road to the church so that Andrii's last journey would be smooth.

“This grader made me laugh the most,” Andrii recalls.

For four days, the village of Kustyn, Rivne district, waited for Andrii's body, which, according to representatives of the military enlistment office, was about to arrive from the Dnipro morgue. And then the wife's burning grief was interrupted by a call from a Kyiv hospital.

The caller said that Andrii was alive but in a very serious condition. Some relatives suspected fraud and rushed to the police.

“And I decided to go to Kyiv to see if my Andrii was really there,” says Olha.

And it really was him.

In that battle near Chervonopopivka in the Luhansk region, only Andrii and his fellow soldier Damir survived out of 30 people in his unit. The command did not know that paramedics had miraculously found them and brought them to Dnipro.

Damir's injury was lighter and he was able to report to the unit later. Nothing was known about Andrii, so the command wrote a notice of his death. At least Andrii considers this option possible.

hromadske went to the hospital in Rivne region, where Andrii Hrytsaichuk is undergoing rehabilitation, and found out what it is like to be mourned and receive a new life as a gift from fate.

“I fell in love with her and that’s it”

Olia from Kustyn is a supermarket cashier. Andrii is a construction worker from neighboring Oleksandriia. She is a divorcee with a child. He is a young man, two years younger.

“My mother used to tell me: 'What are you getting into? You’ve been married once before. Haven’t you had enough of it?’ Andrii was told by his relatives that he should think about it, that he was just a kid, and I am older, with a child,” says Olha.

“And I told my relatives, 'So what? I fell in love with her and that's it,'" adds Andrii.

He has never regretted hitting on Olia and not another girl at a village disco almost nine years ago. They laugh when they remember that disco: Andrii was dancing with a broken leg, on crutches.

He called Olia, and she came over – they knew each other a little bit and started talking. Everything was simple. They got married, and had a girl and a boy: together with Anna, Olia's daughter from her first marriage, they have three children.

“Ania accepted Andrii right away. She says that when she applies for a passport, she will take Andrii's name on it. Andrii was an athlete, he even went to Artek several times as a football player. And Ania went to the sports school that Andrii had graduated from – she wants to be a football player. She cried a lot when the death notice came, she was so sick that we even wanted to call an ambulance,” says Olha.

According to her, Andrii, as a father of three, could have avoided going to the front if he didn't want to. But he wanted to.

“I'm not going to be a pussy”

The Hrytsaichuks also tell the story of Andrii's mobilization laughing. They say he went to buy bread. In fact, the man has always liked the army, and at one time he wanted to do conscript service. But his previous sports injuries kept him out of the army for years.

In early February this year, a man went to a village store to buy bread.

“I was walking and there was a car: two soldiers got out and asked if I was registered. I said yes, I was. They said, 'You need to update your data’. I agreed,” Andrii recalls.

He went to the military enlistment office, passed a medical examination, and was found fit for service. A few days later, he said goodbye to his family.

“He came home with a summons, smiling, saying: ‘Here's the summons…’ The children were crying a lot, and Andrii cried, telling them that they would see him again soon. I didn't want to let him go, and I cried every day while he was settling all those things at the military enlistment office,” Olia recalls.

“I said back then that I would not hide, because I am not a pussy, and everyone will have to go one day,” Andrii adds.

In February, he joined the Armed Forces, in March he was already at the training ground, then became a machine gunner with the 25th Separate Tank Brigade. On March 31, he told Olia that he was at the training so that she would not worry too much and not tell him how to fight. On April 1, he was already at the positions near Chervonopopivka.

“They didn't even tell us where they were taking us, I thought they were taking us to Bakhmut,” says Andrii. “The position was very difficult: it seemed like the katsaps (derogatory term for Russians – ed.) were intercepting us because they were shooting at us precisely. On April 2, aircraft and mortars were firing at us. It's a shame that I fought for less than a day. But I'm glad that I managed to kill at least one katsap. The second one, a machine gunner, was hiding behind a tree about 30 meters away, I fired at him, he ran away, I fired back, and that's all I remember about that battle.”

“There is a brain under the skin”

Andrii does not remember how he screamed that his brain was leaking out, how he threw himself on the bed and had to be tied up. He will be told about all this later.

In episodes, he regained consciousness: he noticed that they were taking him out of the armored personnel carrier, removing his armor, cutting his uniform, turning him over on his stomach, and blood was gurgling in his throat...

In Dnipro, a 20-centimeter fragment and several smaller pieces of metal were removed from his head. Due to brain swelling, doctors removed part of the cranial bone. Another centimeter fragment remained in his head, lodged in a place where it was difficult to remove it. The brain injury affected the right side of the head, so Andrii lost control of his left limbs.

With an open wound in his head, a broken arm and numerous fragments in his body, in a coma, with a bruised lung, and a loss of the ability to swallow, Andrii was brought to a Kyiv hospital. There he was brought out of a coma, treated for a while, and sent to Lviv to have his head wound cleaned of pus and stitched up. It was already July.

“Look, here I have no bone, there is already a brain under the skin,” Andrii gently touches his head. A semicircle of a scar is clearly visible from under his short hair.

Several months of rehabilitation did the man good: although he wears an orthosis on his leg and a cane, he can walk on his own. And he can move his fingers a bit.

At the Klevan hospital, Andrii works with a physical therapist: he learns to keep his balance on a balance beam, does exercises with a ball, trains on a treadmill, etc.

In November, he will undergo another surgery: Lviv doctors will put a plastic “bone” in his skull to cover his brain. This will be followed by a long rehabilitation.

“I do not wish for anything in advance, but I really want my leg and arm to work as they did before the injury,” says Andrii.

Olia laughs: Oh, her husband hasn't carried her and probably won't carry her in his arms anymore!

“What do you mean I haven’t carried you? There's even a photo of me doing that!” Andrii echoes her laughter.

“Beloved wife”

When Andrii's clothes were cut off in Dnipro, his documents must have been lost among the bloody rags. And for some reason, no one paid attention to the fighter's phone and did not try to call Andrii's relatives.

Presumably, in Dnipro, the medics simply did not have time to identify the wounded man – he had to be rescued very quickly. In Kyiv, however, the nurse in the unit recharged her phone and began to carefully study his contact list.

“I don't know how, but the nurse managed to find my Facebook page. She put the phone to my face and said: ‘If this is you in the photo if this is your page, blink your eyes.’ I blinked because I couldn't speak yet,” says Andrii.

Among his phone contacts, Olia was saved as “Beloved Wife”.

“On the morning of April 7, just before the Annunciation, I was nursing my baby when I got a call. The woman introduced herself as Bohdana. And my sister’s name is also Bohdana. I thought she was calling to find out about the funeral. But the woman said: ‘This is a doctor from Kyiv. Your husband is alive, but very seriously injured, write down the address of the hospital.’ I fussed around the house and couldn't find a pen. Somehow I wrote down the address and called Andrii's mother, his sister. And I immediately left for Kyiv. I was so happy – he was alive! He means everything to me!” says Olia.

When she was on her way to Zhytomyr, Andrii's relatives started calling her, saying, not to go anywhere. His sister received a call from the military enlistment office and was told that the body was already being transported, so it was not Andrii, but someone else in Kyiv.

“They said: ‘Some crooks will extort money from you for something, and there will be some trouble.’ In a word, it was a spiral! They went to the police with all this. And I was thinking to myself: why would the military enlistment office call Andrii's sister and not me, his wife? I decided: there is no turning back, I'll get to Kyiv,” Olia recalls that day with fervor, tears in her voice.

She got to the hospital, found the ward, and was already on the verge of standing outside the intensive care unit, where they kept saying: “Wait, they will call you.”

“I asked to see if this man had a tattoo on his arm because Andrii did. They let me into the ward, but I felt sick because I was worried, hungry, and had just swallowed some sedatives in the morning. I had to go out into the corridor again and didn't have time to say a word to him. Then I came up to Andrii, and he could not speak normally, he was whispering: ‘How did you find me, I'm in Dnipro’... And then the Rivne police called the hospital, asking if it was really Andrii,” Olia says, and she and Andrii laugh happily.

They cheerfully crunch candy, like all lovers, and talk to each other in phrases that only they understand, behind which are sweet stories known only to them. And I think the story of Andrii's “resurrection” will be told in the Hrytsaichuk family from generation to generation.