Grandmother's grief as she buries heightens tragedy

Grandmother Svetlana Atamaniuk sobbed and moaned as she paced the pavement opposite Lviv’s central morgue, overflowing with bodies from the Ukrainian air show crash that killed 83.

For 30 hours, she waited to find out whether her family was among them. Today, overcome by waves of grief, she buried her only daughter, son-in-law and two granddaughters in an overgrown cemetery.

But that first night after Saturday’s crash, Mrs Atamaniuk was living in uncertainty, aware only that they had attended the air show at the Sknyliv airfield in western Ukraine " and hadn’t come home.

At one point during her pavement vigil, she sighted a disturbing image.

"They were unloading the bodies before my eyes, and my daughter was in a sack with her legs sticking out," she said.

"My Nataluchka, I recognised her dress, her legs, her shoes."

But she couldn’t know for sure. Lviv’s morgue didn’t have room for the unprecedented volume of corpses, and some victims were stored in refrigerated trucks. The disfiguration of many bodies overwhelmed the former Soviet republic’s emergency services, and identification was slow and cumbersome.

Mrs Atamaniuk refused to leave until she got answers. "I don’t have any reason to go home," she said that night.

All over the city of 800,000 people, families and friends combed hospitals, pressed police and pleaded with emergency officials for confirmation that loved ones had survived after the Su-27 jet fighter plunged into a crowd of spectators and exploded in a ball of fire.

Eleven bodies remained unidentified today.

Atamaniuk was finally summoned to the coroner on Sunday night to make the most difficult walk a mother can make.

Hunched deeply, her steely eyes betraying her shattered emotions, she made her way through dozens of grieving relatives to identify the remains of her only child and grandchildren.

In the courtyard, men in white coats lifted bodies out of a thawing truck onto blood-spattered trolleys, one at a time. Onlookers put their hands politely over their noses and wild dogs wandered the grounds, teased by the stench.

What Mrs Atamaniuk saw inside was beyond her most grim fears.

"I would never wish this on anyone, it’s inexplicable," she said later.

The bodies of her family, 29-year-old Natalia, 30-year-old Andriy and Natalia, eight, and Andriana, four, were so mutilated that it took her and a team of doctors a day to identify them.

On Monday night, Mrs Atamaniuk was able to take their remains home to the cramped apartment the five of them had shared, in a ramshackle Soviet-era building not far from the airfield where they were killed.

"They’re here with me at home now, finally," she said in her tiny kitchen. When she stood, she needed help to maintain her balance.

That night she held a memorial service at home, and a Greek Catholic priest performed last rites while mourners looked on.

Four coffins were stacked on an extended dining table _ in a room where just last week the girls had played _ leaving scant room for family members and neighbours paying their respects.

Today, the two small coffins draped in white satin and two larger, dark wood coffins were lowered into a family grave at the Yanivske cemetery.

Elite police officers fired three shots into the air, punctuating the sobs of mourners. Natalia and Andriy Mykhailiv had both worked for the police, she as an interrogator and he for the psychology department.

Mrs Atamaniuk had planned to go on a seaside holiday this week. Now, her only plan is to visit plot 46 at Yanivske cemetery.

"I can’t live here any more. I spent every day with them. They were always four together, an inseparable whole. Now what? Without them I can’t exist," she said