Holodomor Remembrance Day, 25 November 2017

At the memorial there are five ears of wheat, cast in bronze, held in a child's hands. The number is exact and it refers to a law that made gleaning what was left in a harvested field a criminal offence.

I mention that detail because it is the kind of specificity that keeps a memorial from becoming an abstraction. This was not a natural disaster. It was administered.

Today the country stops for a minute and lights candles in the evening. That is the whole observance, and its restraint is part of what makes it heavy.

Eternal memory.