Separated By War, HoCo Family Struggles To Bring Home Son

Ellicott City MD

07 March, 2022

6:24 PM

Description

HOWARD COUNTY, MD — While the war has been raging in Ukraine, one family from Howard County has felt the impact at their home. It's the empty seat at the dinner table. The empty bed. The heartbreak not knowing if their soon-to-be 16-year-old son is safe. Jennifer and Matthew Ruff were in the final stages of adopting Sasha, who lives in eastern Ukraine. The process would've been finalized just a couple of weeks after the war broke out. "It's just been really difficult this past week trying to figure out the right words to say, how to keep him encouraged and make him feel loved," Jennifer Ruff told WBAL. "No one prepares you to parent a child for war, how can you prepare yourself for that. He is the best kid. He is funny, he is goofy, he is silly and he attached so quickly to us." Since the war started, the Ruffs have been in touch in Sasha often through texts and video chats. They've been difficult. "He's terrified and panicked. And he's saying, 'Mama, there's five, there's five,' and he's holding the phone out the window to show me there's five shelling and that he had just experienced explosions," Jennifer Ruff said. The couple isn't sure what else they can do. "It's been overwhelming to figure how to help, what the right steps are, what steps to do what steps not to do," Matthew Ruff said. The Ruffs and other adoptive parents are asking the government for help. "They don't have a parent to tuck them in at night and hug them and hold them while they are crying and scared, and they are hearing these bombs go off in the basement of these bomb shelters," Host Orphans Worldwide spokeswoman Jill Krenzer told WBAL. Host Orphans Worldwide is a nonprofit organization that runs a hosting program with 15 orphanages in Ukraine to pair orphans with American families. It has been working to get kids out of orphanages and into safer bordering countries, WBAL reported. "We're looking to get a B-2 visa, which is like a visitor visa, it's the same visa they come with on the hosting program. We are basically asking for the same thing to run a long-term hosting program for whatever it looks like," she said. In the meantime, the Ruffs continue to check in on Sasha as much as they can. They're reminded of the hurt and pain halfway around the world when they look at the Ukrainian flag hanging on a tree in their front yard, a flag they hung in solidarity with their soon-to-be son and his country. "Your heart feels broken because you have this responsibility, and you have this love and you want to do everything you can for these children and it feels hard," Matthew Ruff said.