1. Bang your head against a brick wall-S. Protsiuk

1.1

Svyryd went to his mother grave. November leaves were falling. There wasn’t anyone else in the small village cemetery. He lit a candle and prayed. Then the man started palming the faded under rains cross as if caressing his mother black and gray hair.
He wasn’t in a rush while gently patting the cross plate with dates of birth and death on it. While mentally adding numbers Svyryd was looking for some patterns. But he is only a son, not a numerologist or Kabbalist... It’s time to go. "God, what remains of the body after several months of lying in the ground?"
He came to his parents' house. It breathed desolation. Dad was in the hospital. Svyryd sat for a long time. The burden of memories kept him fastened to the chair.
Then he began to go over some old things.
...that’s his mother's clothes; they are useless now, excessive... He remembered that some time ago his mother needed a winter coat. The coat was bought and it became alive. And now that coat is dead together with his mother because no one wears it. As it said, you can’t wear the clothes of the deceased.
He tossed some stuff in an old closet and in a few ancient lockers. Who would be older, him or the stuff?
...that’s a buckthorn bark with long-term imprisonment in a box. His mother liked to drink it as a tea. That box is amazing, like a dried butterfly.
...those are some old newspapers with some memorable publications (Memorable to whom? For what and how? How many years or months they were memorable? Who was the most impressed? His dad? Mom? Both of them?). A newspaper is a form of life-flash and quick death. Who is savvy about the issue, for example, of "Young Ukraine", dated March 18, 1995? And who might be interested in such information, other than the authors and figurants in the materials? ...What are these publications about? But they didn’t die, didn’t disintegrated into dust.  I can still touch it with my own hands and swipe the pages. Maybe my mother didn’t die either, because she lives my memory? No, she didn’t, just faintly laid down to rest. How long she will stay asleep? She is tired, you know... Mom, where are you? Mom! Only the silence surrounds him, like at the cemetery.
...these are some old cups, mother's dusty sweaters, expired festal and "Mezym forte"...
...it's the stale air of the place once called home, the despair of his lonely father...
...these walls, which remembered his mother in her young age; those stairs where they often talked together, when twilights were coming; these skies, under which his mother gave him a birth...
...As for now, everything is here except her...