Communion

We do it timidly, like teenagers whose parents have gone to the country.

Like criminals dividing the loot among themselves.

As if violators of some sacred oath.

We are embarrassed to rustle the sweet wrappers. The bright colour of the strawberry cake brings tears to our eyes. To tell a joke is sacrilege, an original sin, mockery of the dead.

How can you eat cake when there have been four air raids in a day in Ukraine, when those who are left are sitting in cellars, and many do not have bread?

What kind of wine can there be when in Mariupol rainwater is collected for drinking?

How can you listen to music and poetry, and afterwards smile, when the most common sounds in Ukraine are sirens and explosions?

I find it hard to remember what our first and only toast was; what the words were; who pronounced them. But I well remember the taste of the wine. It was reminiscent of communion wine, given after confession.

It was a taste of the vow to live. A vow to retain the strength to love this life as passionately as we have learned to hate our killers.

A vow to withstand all our nightly panic attacks, fears and excitement, despair and separation.

A vow to go on, not to get lost, not to curse, not to die from the inside, not to turn to what is no longer there.

A vow to accept the future, whatever it may be, and to make it our way, not the way of someone who has determined they have the right to decide for us.

A vow to return home with this future, with strength, with faith, with the resources to become a support, a source of life for those who stayed at home, who experienced all this in the cellars of their houses, in Metro tunnels, in corridors between two walls...

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