Toronto work tragedy shatters lives
Mother can't find the words to tell girl her father is dead
By CHRIS DOUCETTE, QMI Agency
Canoe.ca
December 27, 2009
TORONTO – The second Irina Cherniakova learned her husband was among the four contractors killed in the tragic scaffold accident, she knew her life would never be the same and that she would never be able to celebrate Christmas again.
The grief-stricken woman managed to break the news on Christmas Day to her eldest daughter, Inna, 14. But she didn't have the heart to tell her youngest child, Daniela, 7, that her father, Vladimir Korostin, was never coming home because she didn't want to spoil the holiday season for her forever.
“I have no idea how to do it or what I'm going to say, so I haven't told her yet,” Cherniakova, 36, told the Sun yesterday, dabbing tears from her eyes with a tissue as her friend Olga Kosogor, 26, translated her Russian into English.
“She still thinks he's alive, that he was just hurt, and she's waiting for him to come home from the hospital,” the emotional woman added when little Daniela was out of earshot in another room at a friend's North York apartment.
She said their oldest daughter was more independent and better equipped to absorb the horrific news, but their youngest was still “daddy's little girl.”
Korostin, 40, and Cherniakova moved their family to Canada from Israel as refugee claimants about three years ago.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
RELATED STORIES :
Workers' terrifying final moments
Young widow struggling after death
Legality of dead workers probed
