Planting tulips instead of shedding tears: house where souls are healed

She can't come to her son's grave and lean against his cross. But a Kyiv artist painted a mural on the entire wall of her house: Illia in a military uniform with an assault rifle in his hands. So close and so far away forever...

Olha decided to invite mothers and wives of fallen soldiers to this house with her son's mural in the village of Busha in Vinnytsia region for a vacation.

“I wanted to do something nice for people whose lives are so painful right now. I wanted to make them feel that they are not alone, that there is some support, that someone understands their grief and is there for them. Because they really need attention, which cannot be replaced by any state payments,” the woman explains.

hromadske visited Busha to witness the first check-in at Olha’s estate.

Cups on saucers

In the center of Busha, among the rose blossoms, the community has set up an Alley of Glory for the fallen villagers. I was very surprised not to see a photo of Illia Chernilevskyi on it.

"My son and I are from Kyiv, and I once bought two houses in the village as summer cottages. Illia loved to vacation here, but he was never a local resident,” explains Olha.

A direct road leads from the Alley of Glory to her farm. The Ukrainian flag at the gate is a reliable landmark. A few meters away, Olha's second house, also with a flag, is located.

Olha is a philologist by training, and until recently she worked as a dubbing director and project manager for foreign film translation. She turned her village houses in Busha into comfortable cottages. New appliances and elegant fireplaces naturally coexist with traditional stoves and ovens, and painted grandmother's chests are next to paintings by contemporary artists.

When you enter the farmstead, you immediately realize why Olha called her estate “Cozy House”. It is indeed very warm and calm here: well-groomed flower beds with roses and chrysanthemums, grape arbors, comfortable benches and armchairs in the yard, emerald grass after rain, young fruit trees. The neat houses on the neat lawns look like cups on saucers.

Busha is a well-known tourist center. People from Ukraine and Europe constantly come here for retreats, relaxation, and meditation. The village actually lives off of tourist groups: fences and poles are covered with advertisements for renting housing and cooking meals to order.

Olha also rented out her estate to tourists. Until recently.

A bird between the nets

Illia said that he would definitely go to the front if a full-scale war broke out. He died two months after his mobilization. He tried not to tell his family about his life on the front line that could upset them. But his trench poems told the mother everything her son kept silent about.

The 110th Brigade knew that their fighter, Illia Chernilevskyi, had been killed. However, the body was on the occupied territory. So Olha was forced to formalize documents stating that her son was missing. It was only in 2023 that she succeeded in having Illia declared dead in court.

“Illia could not foresee the war, in his poems from the front he wrote that he would definitely return, that is, he did not go to the war to die. But from an early age he somehow knew that his life would be short. It scared me,” says Illia’s mother.

Illia, a film and television director by profession, worked as a screenwriter and translated songs for TV series. He wrote poems and composed music to them, and won prizes as a performer of his songs at pop competitions.

On her son's 21st birthday, Olha gave him a present: she published his first book of poetry. The second collection was organized by Olha 10 years later, in 2023. Posthumously. “I am a bird between the nets,” Olha titled the book, taking a line from her son's poem.

“I am very sorry that our life often consists of some unimportant things. Our dialogues with children are about whether they ate or why they came home late. But in reality, when you see those eyes, so sad, you need to ask why your soul is hurting. Can I help you somehow, maybe let’s sit down and talk?

And we are busy with work, which becomes the main thing in our lives. Children are perceived as something that will always be with you. You think that you will be gone, and you try to prepare your children for that, to provide for them financially. You never think about the fact that your child may be gone. And you can't be prepared for that. It is simply impossible. That's why the loss hurts so much,” Olha covers her eyelids to prevent a tear from running down her cheek.

“Illia would have loved it”

She was never interested in volunteering or community service. In recent years, she has been concerned only with her son, and she wanted as many people as possible to know how talented and sincere he was in his work.

And this summer, a friend of a friend came to visit her in Busha for a few days — a woman had lost her beloved in the war. She stayed for a few days, but it was thanks to the conversation with her that Olha got the idea to invite mothers and wives of fallen soldiers to visit:

“I thought it would be good for people. And that Illia would have liked it. He was very responsive to other people's misery. It was his style.”

Olha asked a few civic activists she knew to post her invitation and phone number on their social media pages, and literally immediately she began receiving calls and emails from women who were interested in the opportunity to vacation in Busha.

According to Olha, she has never been on a retreat herself, and she was disappointed in group sessions with a psychologist a long time ago.

“I went there twice and refused to do it again. I don't feel any better when I talk about my experiences to strangers and listen to others,” the woman says.

"But you want to bring together people who have lost husbands and sons, you want to concentrate other people's pain around you — do you really hope that you and your guests will be able to rest your souls in this concentrated longing?” I ask Olha frankly.

“I don't know. But here, there will be no one in charge of the women, no compulsory classes and no set topics of conversation. They will rest as they wish. They can just go to the forest to sit on a stump, visit our museums, take a walk by the river. I will not impose my company on anyone.

A person can just come and be silent all the time, be in seclusion all the time. If someone wants to communicate, let them. I offer free accommodation and that's it. I can provide housing with all the amenities for 20 guests at the same time, and it's up to them to decide how they spend their time here. If they don't like it, they can leave at any time,” says Olha.

By the way, the community of Busha supported Olha's initiative: there were people willing to cook for her guests, the staff of the historical and cultural reserve promised to give them tours, and local volunteers would like to entertain them. It was a great pleasure for Olha.

“Come in, Liudochka”

While we were talking to Olha in Busha, a guest from Kyiv region, Liudmyla, was already coming. To give the hostess time to make the final preparations, we went to Yampil to meet Liudmyla from the Vinnytsia bus.

“Olia was so sincere when she offered me a vacation that I believed her,” Liudmila tells us.

Her son Vladyslav also died in May 2022. He was a conscript who had signed a contract with the Armed Forces before the full-scale war. The middle of Liudmyla's three children, born in 2001.

“For the first two years after Vladyk's death, I didn't seem to live in the world, and I had no desire to go anywhere. But this year, my friends invited me to Verkhovyna, and I felt that the trip made me feel better. Because every corner at home reminds me of my son, and it's very hard at home.

I started to travel a little bit — it distracts me from the pain. Although the wound in my soul is for life. Psychologists can't help me, I can't stand these conversations about loss, about grief, I don't want it. I need some other activities to help me switch to other thoughts,” Liudmyla tells me on the way.

“Liudochka, come in,” Olha hugs her guest.

The first few minutes of the meeting are bustling. Olia shows Liudmyla around the farmstead and tells her that this year she has harvested 25 fruits from her small young pear tree.

“Is this a ‘Forest Beauty’?” Liudmyla unmistakably identifies the variety.

We take pictures of the guest in the grape arbor and her room and quietly close the door behind us.

Two days later, I called Busha.

“Were you not disappointed in your idea?” I asked Olha.

"No, of course not. Everything is going well, we have time for communication and for ourselves. Liuda is a very delicate woman. I feel quite comfortable with her,” says the owner of the Cosy House.

And Liudmyla did not hide her joyful pleasure when I called her. Together with Olha, she was planting tulip bulbs in the flower beds — such a pleasant work!

The day before, the reserve's staff gave Liudmyla an individual tour, showing her the weaving museum and the caves. Volunteers from the local Red Cross branch came and taught her how to draw — she drew an apple on her own.

“No one pried into my soul, I said what I wanted, told the volunteers about the tour, about the tulips, about the very friendly people in the store,” says Liudmyla.

Before I called her, she was taking pictures of the scenery and filming a video. She had already sent the footage to her friends, people like herself, the mothers of the fallen. She told them how well Olia was receiving her and invited them to come visit. She already has a favorite place in the estate — in a gazebo made of colorful cloths, where it is so cozy to sit in a chair against the sun.

“It's very beautiful here, very nice, there’s so much air. I was planning to come for three or four days, and now I'm thinking about staying longer, my friends promised to come and are already going,” the woman shares her impressions.

She wants to talk more and more, but she doesn't have time, as she and Olia have been invited to visit local cheesemakers. It's so interesting to watch milk turn into cheese! And then they will plant tulip bulbs in the flower beds again.

“It's very good to give flowers a new life,” Liudmyla says goodbye to me.

This material was created with the support of the Federal Foreign Office of Germany.