A Story of Hope
In 2018, gathering the tears and memories of elderly people in Bessarabia (Ukraine), who had endured the horrors of famine, I recorded their stories of death and survival. Among them was one I would call “A Story of Hope”.
An old man told me: “Terrible events came to our village and all of Bessarabia. In our village alone, over two thousand people died from hunger. There wasn’t a single family or home that didn’t go through this famine. The former mayor of the village during the famine years, Afanasiy Ivanovych Sotirov, told me: ‘The Bessarabian Bulgarian is a steward by blood. Even as he dies, he thinks of the future, of what will remain after him... I remember once I entered a house, and there on the floor lay a man, dead from hunger. I found a stash under the floor, and inside it — a sack of grain. This man had saved the grain for spring planting, to save his family in the future. Even when he couldn’t save them from hunger, he thought of the field that needed to be sown.’ The village head was astonished: ‘Is this foolishness or heroism? What did this man do? He saved seed grain instead of using it to save his family. He could have saved them, but he chose to keep the grain for the next harvest. It’s terrifying!’ The whole family died of hunger, and the sack of grain remained untouched. A handful of grain could have changed a lot. With one handful of grain, you can survive a whole day. But he followed an unwritten law: “You die of hunger, but you don’t touch the seed grain!”
This story is not just a narrative, it’s a true testament. His words continue to echo within me, like embers ready to ignite into new flames. Did this man leave more than just a memory? Did he sow something within me with that handful of grain he refused to eat? A person I never met chose to sow his grain with hope for life, for a spring he would never see. And this grain sprouted in me—not as a wheat stalk, but as an understanding of human resilience, vitality, and the memory passed through generations. I have preserved the seeds of these stories to sow by share them in the present — with hope that will grow some unknown future, now watered by the blood of war. We keep the seed grain, awaiting the spring sun, for hope is our unbreakable drive toward life!
Epistle to the Romans 8:24-25: “For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.”
Yona 2024