Smagliuk Galina
Will Have A House
Thanks to Dell Loy Hansen

Galina Smagliuk is 73 years old. On March 3rd, Galina was at home with her son watching the news when a shell hit their house. Her son jumped and ran into the corridor, and Galina managed to shout, “Son, stop!” before another shell hit him directly in the corridor. Neighbors helped extinguish the fire and took her son outside. Galina remembers how badly he was injured, lying on the street and asking her to close the windows because he was cold. He didn’t understand that he was outside or what was happening.

Neighbors called the police for help, but no one came. They then called the military from the territorial defense, who arrived after 15 minutes and took them to the clinic. When they arrived at the clinic, Galina was sent to a bomb shelter and was not allowed to stay with her son. She begged to be allowed to stay with him, but she was refused. The next morning, on March 4th, Galina went to visit her son and found that no one was at the clinic. The doors were locked, and she had no idea what was going on. Just a few hours ago, the night before, she had brought her wounded son here. She ran around the clinic, banging on doors and windows, but everything was locked. Then a guard came and said there were no patients in the hospital, and there was no one there at all. Galina didn’t understand what was going on, where her son had gone, or where to look for him. Irpen had been evacuated, and there were heavy battles going on.

Every day, Galina went to the clinic in the hope of finding something out, but all the doors were locked every day. On March 7th, she met a nurse in the yard who had given her son an IV when he was brought to the hospital. The nurse said her son had died and was in the morgue, but they couldn’t reach it because the roads were blocked due to the ongoing battles. Galina was overwhelmed with grief.

Neighbors took Galina in (also in Irpen). On March 23rd, a rocket hit their home. Galina remembers feeling a sense of doom that day, and she was scared, so she went down to the basement. The house was destroyed, and the cellar was buried under the debris. Volunteers barely pulled her out and took her away. She had nowhere to go, but she remembered that a friend of hers lived in a village that, as it turned out, was not affected. So she went to Tarasivka to stay with her friends and lived there until May 13th.

She returned to Irpen on May 13th and began searching for her son’s body. No one knew where his body was. She couldn’t forgive herself or come to terms with her son’s loss, and that she couldn’t give him a proper burial. She learned from a local deputy that he was in the morgue in Vyshhorod. Galina finally found her son’s body and was able to bury him, but the grief and pain of losing her son stayed with her.