 Oxana Afanasenko, left, and Irina Cherniakova, right, wives of Aleksey Blumberg and Vladimir Korostin, who fell to their deaths on Christmas Eve. (Dave Thomas/QMI Agency).
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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.
They hoped to eventually become Canadian citizens but the stress of immigration and struggles, financial and otherwise, of being newcomers in a foreign land took a toll on their relationship.
The couple recently decided to divorce, but they continued to live together.
"I still love him with all of my heart, though," Cherniakova said, fighting back tears once again. "We've been together 15 years and we have two kids together, so of course I still love him."
She said Korostin was "a good man" and he was still supporting her and their kids.
But Cherniakova has no idea what will happen now that he is gone.
"I'm not working because I have two kids to take care of," she said. "I don't know what I'm going to do."
Even worse, she has a hearing coming up next month for her landed immigrant status and she's afraid that without her husband's financial support she could be deported back to Israel.
"I hope that doesn't happen," said Taras Polishchuk, Kosogor's husband and a close friend of Korostin and Aleksey Blumberg, who also died in the industrial accident.
"I know Vladimir's dream was for his girls to grow up here," he added. "That's why he worked so hard, so that they could have a good life."
CHRIS.DOUCETTE@SUNMEDIA.CA
