Words that Never Leave You: “I hope you are taking notes for God’s tribunal.”
Part Twenty-Three in an ongoing series from Hollie's book "Words That Never Leave You: Fifty Pearls of Wisdom and Reflection from Survivors Across the World."
For days and weeks, streams of Ukraine’s most vulnerable residents hobbled across the ashes of Irpin city’s broken bridge: tiny babies sheathed in muddied blankets, the elderly in wheelchairs and barely able to shuffle with a cane, a sick child engulfed in necklaces of pearl-white medical tubes. Each face that passes by appeared a mosaic of trauma, heaviness, and a simple hope to make it through. As the local death toll mounted, many residents – hiding for dear life in their basements – endured days without running water, food, or electricity, emerging to see much of their city brought to its knees.
But resilience has a face and a scent and a voice. People withstand because they believe justice will come – however long it takes.
“I hope you are taking notes for God’s tribunal,” one elderly lady, her face a map of wrinkles and affliction, informed me as she struggles to cross the cauterized Irpin Bridge.
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