Svetlana Bukharina was overcome with emotion on Dec. 26 when she had to bury her only son, Kirill, 3. The boy killed by his father, Dmitriy Kanarikov, when he threw the boy off the roof of a city skyscraper before jumping to his own death on Dec. 22. The funeral ceremony took place at Synod Cathedral of the Mother of the Sign, a Russian Orthodox cathedral in New York City — the same church that Svetlana and Dmitiry had married at in 2009.
Family and about 100 friends in attendance at the funeral left white flowers next to a heartbreaking photo of Kirill smiling widely.
The funeral service for Kirill lasted 45 minutes, and the close-knit group of mourners tried to come to terms with the senseless loss of such a young boy.
“I had no idea that anything like this could ever happen,” Bishop Jerome Shaw said at the funeral, reported NY Daily News. “But God evens everything [out]. If we suffer in this life, if we die young, or if we’re persecuted … God rewards us for all of that.”
Svetlana had previously explained that as she struggled to cope with her tragic loss, she realized her worst fears about her husband’s threats during their custody battle had come true.
“When we first separated, Dmitriy told me that he would leave me alone only if I left him everything we had together. Money and assets were most important to him,” Svetlana explained in a statement given through her attorney, Alla Roytberg. “Otherwise he said, he would take the child away and I will ‘shoot myself from grief.’”
“This was his sick way to take Kirill away from me,” she said.
Our thoughts remain with Svetlana and her family at this difficult time.
— Kristine Hope Kowalski
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