I met my parents after they died
WHENAnya Yurchyshyn became an orphan at 32, she didn’t like her parents very much. Then she stumbled upon a trove of documents that helped her see them in a whole new light, she writes in her memoir, “MyDead Parents” (Crown).
Yurchyshyn grew up in a Boston townhouse with a manipulative and glamorous alcoholic mother and disciplinarian father who were always leaving on mysterious business trips to Egypt, Italy and Saudi Arabia. Finally, her dad returned to his roots, working with banks and venture capitalism in Kiev. “I knew very little about his work. I was just thrilled he was gone,” Yurchyshyn says.
When she was 14, she was told that her father had been killed in a car accident. Instead of mourning, her reaction was to rebel. “I was . . . giving my mother a hard time, not really understanding what she was going through.”
Eighteen years later, her mother died, too, of heart failure as a result of “unabashed alcoholism, the kind where you drink whatever you can get your hands on.” Left with the task of cleaning up her childhood home, Yurchyshyn found a box of letters, photos and journals — a discovery that turned her world around.
She had only seen her parents as a bitter, angry couple, but torrid love letters proved the opposite was true. From her mother’s journals, she learned that she had lost a child early on in the marriage, leading to her struggles with drinking and depression. These findings forced her to go deeper. Yurchyshyn started talking to her dad’s old Ukrainian friends, one of whom gave her the biggest shock of all: His death may have been no accident. Turns out, her father had believed strongly in Ukrainian independence and wanted to change the world by helping bring down the Soviet Union — a political viewpoint that could get you killed (though she still hasn’t been able to confirm he was murdered).
Still, Yurchyshyn’s journey left her with the biggest revelation of all: She finally felt some respect for her parents — and was able to forgive them. “I have so much compassion,” she says now, “for my parents as people.”