By Tamar Jacoby
It looks like a video shot with a phone from an apartment window. The camera pans a line of cars stopped on the roadway below, and it takes a minute to understand what we’re looking at.
Then a cortege comes into view: about 50 people walking slowly behind a coffin draped with the Ukrainian flag. When the shot widens, we see that traffic traveling in the other direction on the eight-lane road has come to a halt, and people have gotten out of their cars. A few are standing solemnly as the funeral passes; most are kneeling on the asphalt, heads bowed in respect.
By the time I see the social media post, “The funeral of a fallen defender in Kyiv today,” nearly a thousand viewers have reacted with comments or emojis. Among the most common: Heroyam slava — glory to the heroes.
Memorial Day in the U.S. was set aside to honor those who fell in the Civil War. Now Americans play “Taps” and put flowers on graves of those who died in many wars, all in the past. Here in Ukraine, people can only dream of the day when the flag-draped funerals have ended and battles are distant memories commemorated by a nation at peace.
