Another day without papa.

It rained in the morning, so the day turned out to be not as hot as the previous three.

Mama checked a few hospitals - walked from floor to floor, looking inside rooms.

She also walked through the Botanical Garden again. (Did I mention it here that this was where we lost papa? The Garden that everyone goes to to look at the lilacs, not the one that's got magnolias. The one near Lesya Ukrainka and Druzhby Narodov Boulevards.)

With Marta, I walked from Besarabka all the way to the War Museum under the Motherland statue, via all the parks and the tennis courts on Moskovska.

And via Pecherska Lavra.

There, I found a place where they feed homeless people for free, twice a day. The guard I spoke to mentioned another place where they also feed the homeless, at the Left Bank, and mama went there later and, quite miraculously, ran into the guard who used to work at the state committee for sports and knew my father. He took papa's photo and promised to show it to the bums: many of them are very caring people, he said, and they'd definitely bring papa along if they see him. A tiny little bit of hope.

Mama really praised this charity place, and I've looked it up on the web (UKR): it's called Stephania and has been around since 1998. The homeless and the poor can eat there all day long, do their laundry, take a shower, see a doctor, watch a movie. Neither the cops, nor the drunks are allowed to enter the place. Mayor Chernovetsky has something (or a lot?) to do with it all - and if this is so, then for once I have something good to say about him.

Also, thanks to at least one or maybe even a few phone calls from up high, the police is now going to open a criminal investigation case. Usually, they aren't too willing to do this, because an open case means something really has to be done to close it - or else the unsolved case is going to spoil their performance stats.

And NTN ran a little info bit on papa tonight.

And now we're trying to get his photo printed in a newspaper.

And just like after 9/11, I've a problem getting myself to cry. No matter how terrible I feel, I can't cry. Not a single tear since papa's disappearance. Maybe it's because I realize that if I let myself cry now, I won't be able to stop. Or maybe this is what extreme shock does to me.