Originally from Mariupol, I moved to Kyiv seven years ago. My whole family stayed in our hometown, so when the invasion started, I became their only hope. On February 26, after a shelling that cut off electricity in our district, I lost contact with my paralyzed father. Rockets struck only 30 meters from his house. On March 2, I lost contact with the rest of my family, when electricity went off in the whole city. The only operational bridge connecting the left and right banks of Mariupol was blown in the first days of the full-scale invasion. Since my family has always lived on the Left Bank, they were cut off from the world. April 19 marked my father’s birthday, and it also marked 52 days since we last spoke. Later I learnt that my father’s house had partially burned down. My mom who lived half an hour away by a walk, came in with a flashlight and saw my father in the hallway. He was lying on a mattress on a concrete floor. My mom took care of him visiting several times under shelling and then managed to evacuate him with the help of volunteers to a hospital in Makiivka, in the Donetsk region. It took weeks, a long chain of caregivers, transporters, and HTL volunteers to finally bring my father to Kyiv to reunite with me. He had lost his toes due to the frostbite and was severely traumatized but he was finally safe after an exhausting journey.