Whoever saves one life saves the whole world

I dedicate this to my father, Kot, Yizhak, Hudson, Panas, Vasyl, P.R., everyone who literally snatched my father from the jaws of death, and all the residents of Maryinka, Dobropillya, and Pokrovsk. “Whoever saves a single life saves the entire world”—this is a well-known saying from the Talmud, with which I will begin this story. My father really does look like a bear—but not a mean one at all; rather, a big, kind, and shy one. That’s how he came to be known—Bear. During the first months of the war, my father persistently pushed to go to the front, and in September 2022, he joined the army, keeping it a secret from the family. And then, when we found out—we were overcome by a numbing, deep pain that literally knocked the wind out of us. I still remember that rainy October day when we stood there silently drinking coffee before he left for the front lines—the day after the first massive missile attack on Ukraine. I was only 16. Inside, I felt utterly devastated; it felt as though life was coming to an end, and the final credits with our names were about to roll on the screen. The days that followed became just like the sky—gray, damp, and endless. I’d wake up and fall asleep thinking about my father and hoping for that same phone call, so I could hear his voice for the first time in a week or two. Every time I heard his stories, my blood ran cold—they were emotional roller coasters ranging from total despair in humanity to a transcendent elation from tales in which human dignity soared above the stars. A cold and gray December 2022. Early morning. My mom’s phone rang—it was a call from my dad’s brother-in-arms, Vasyl. From the look on her face, I instantly knew she’d heard something was wrong, but I couldn’t even begin to imagine what exactly. “Your husband saved me, but he wasn’t there during the evacuation. He’s either a prisoner or dead. Thank you, and I’m sorry.” Every letter of that sentence was etched into our memory, each word carved out with the sharpest blade. Chaos raged in my head: “What? My father? Our Bear?” The hardest thing was grappling with the phrase my father had once said: “If they catch me, I’ll blow myself up. I won’t surrender.” Death or death… Every second dragged on like an hour. I sat there, staring at a single point, and repeated: “This can’t be true. He’s my father—he’s bound to survive. I don’t know how, but I know for sure he’ll survive.” For the first time in my 16 years, I keenly realized the transience of human life, which has a tendency to end all too easily. Meanwhile, my mom was calling all the military personnel she knew to find out at least something. And that same evening, we received a call from P.R., whose role in our lives is hard to put into words: “The Bear is alive, at his post, carrying out his mission.” That sense of relief is incomparable to anything else in the world. It was, without a doubt, one of the most wonderful miracles of our lives. It all unfolded amid the hell of Maryinka—a town of which, by that time, only foundations, ruins, and lives lost among them remained, and where the fiercest battles were raging. My father and his comrades were holding the defense in a half-ruined house, where once, no doubt, children’s laughter had echoed loudly and the smell of Grandma’s pies had filled the air. When suddenly a painfully familiar explosion rang out—but this time right above their heads. The walls began to crumble; Vasyl was buried under the rubble, and without a moment’s hesitation, Vedmid rushed to pull him out so that the ruins wouldn’t become a mass grave for both of them. He pulled his brother out, but in the next instant, a wall collapsed onto his own father. The evacuation proceeded without him. According to my father, in those moments beneath the rubble, the only people on his mind were my mother and me. He wasn’t afraid for himself—he was only afraid that we wouldn’t be able to cope with losing him. By the most miraculous of miracles—this is not the end of the story, because at that moment a rotation took place, and other soldiers found my father and pulled him out from under the rubble. The next evacuation, and finally—departure from the position. The struggle in those freezing, inhuman conditions and the concussions didn’t go unnoticed—in the spring, my father was admitted to the hospital. And on April 21, 2023, we finally saw him again. And here we are—just a few months earlier, we weren’t sure if we’d ever see each other again in this lifetime, and now my father is right here beside me at my graduation. “No matter what happens, no matter how things turn out, Good will always triumph over evil.”