Oleh P. Rehotun

"Life and death fit into one paragraph in the Book of Memory and Wikipedia." Oleg Petrovich Rehotun is just one among a vast list of fallen heroes for the average visitor to this site. For our family, he is a son, brother, father, and husband, our Oleg. Grief came to our family on a cool August morning; one phone call turned our lives upside down. A little 8-year-old boy went to bed in the evening, having played outside, cheerful and happy, and woke up an orphan. An even smaller girl, 3 years old, had just chirped to her dad on the phone yesterday: "Come home faster, Dad!" The mother prayed around the clock and sincerely believed in the power of her prayer. The father believed that no one but us, my son, my flesh and blood, my hope. The wife prayed, believed, and waited. The sisters believed the restrained stories over the phone that he would keep himself safe for the children. A helmet, a bulletproof vest, professionalism — everything was with our Oleg. The night of August 5 to 6, 2014, at Luhansk International Airport, fierce battles, night, exhaustion, cursed BM-21 installations, weapons that carry a terrible and deadly force, destroying bodies, tearing flesh, and shattering bones — the end of life! What was his last thought? Did it hurt? Was it instant? So many questions. We read daily about heroes on Facebook, watch war movies, buy toy tanks for our sons; we are a generation that grew up not knowing war in reality, and the wish for peaceful skies above sounded like a cliché to us. Grief came from the television screen, the internet, newspapers, conversations in the minibus to our yard, to our home! And only then did everything happening in the country become real; wake up, people! Our Oleg is a serviceman for whom honor and oath were not empty words. But how do we live on without him? *** Smoke in the quiet rain outside the window carefully, then it says: be glad at least that you do not hide where you are and who you are, and that the planes in the sky above are all at sea, and not ready for air combat and not carrying a cargo of two hundred — for such a thing can happen very soon. Thank every day that your ceiling of four walls holds firm; that sometimes you accept me like this at night; after all, just for the fact that today no one shot you while you were walking home with new dresses and fresh vegetables — or do you still think that with anyone but us? Rejoice that you read in the morning when they will turn on the hot water, and not explore the lists of the dead from that night. Fear nothing, buy alcohol, cigarettes, and fresh strawberries, for, after all, living next to death is almost the same as just living, except that there is less time left for nonsense. In other words — sleep, little one, may something good come to you in a dream. Drops hang on the branches, wet calm flows through the night courtyards. Who among us really knows what is best of what happens to us, and what is last. (K. Babkina) On behalf of our family, Rehotun A. P.