William
(Will) Clement Chewchuk
Your Eminence Archbishop Yurij, Very
Reverend Bohdan Hladio, Chancellor of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Canada,
Reverend Fathers, my dear Brothers and Sisters, Glory to Jesus Christ.
Vasylko, Vasylko. Now
that we are all cried out from grief and sorrow, it is time to celebrate your
life, You always loved a party, and we know you are with us now, a little bird
and butterflies told us so. In all of your 19 years, you gave us a lesson in
how to love each other, how to hug, and how grown men may cry. You truly walked
in His steps. Your contemporaries came in all colours and creeds. Orthodox,
Catholic, Protestant, Muslim and Buddhists gathered strength and prayed
together in our Cathedral. They may not have understood the words of the
prayers sung in Ukrainian, but they told us that they felt the deep depth of
the fervent prayers and the responses sung by your beloved Capella Bandura
Brothers and over 60 voices of the choir. Friends prayed in their own churches
and temples and in Kyiv,
Will, you have gathered
us all here today together as one whole family, leaning on each other for
strength and expressing our deep love for you. It was like an Easter service,
overflowing with over 2,000 people who came to pray with us. Even your
kindergarten teacher came to tell me that with the hundreds of children she had
taught, she remembered you as someone special.
From the very beginning
you came to us as a gift from God, as every child does. You wore a cute little
blue toque–as you always loved your caps and hats, and you looked us all over
and gave our family your full approval. You never cried or whined, even to the
painful end, and all the children loved to play with you, because you always
shared your toys and everything you had. You were their Pied Piper.
Your sister Katya always
loved to hug you and, immediately, declared that as your older sister, her job
was to be your official tormentor. You immediately let her do it because you
knew that with your consent she would not enjoy it. You would become bound to
each other, closer than anyone could be, right to the end, and forever in her
heart,
Willy, we worried that
for the first four years you never spoke much and you said to me, “Dido, what
smart thing can you expect a four-year-old to say, when he is just learning
what life around him is all about.” When your Khrestna Irene, your Mom, Teta
Katrusia and Baba Ruzia were sewing the much-needed new stychary (altar boy
robes), Baba Ruzia sewed a special little one for you when you were five years
old, to start your service to the Church and the Cathedral that your
great-grandfather helped build. Maxym Trojan mentored you and then you took his
place to mentor others. There was also the Petro Mohyla Institute, where for
three summers you studied Ukrainian and gathered a network of friends. You also
attended the Bandura and Odum summer camps.
You studied advanced
mathematics at Kumon, and ranked in the top-ten percentile in
Last week, when Baba and
I sat with you, you talked for over three hours, regaling us with your life
story: your love for the best cousins anyone could be blessed with, about
riding in the “Gator” with your best friend Sasha, about how you wanted to leam
guitar from your cousin James, and about the best Babas in the world, and about
Baba Valia’s varenyky and Baba Ruzia’s famous chicken soup. You reminisced how
you loved skiing and snow-boarding at which you excelled. With your trip to
Tuesday morning at