"Please, please stay alive and save yourselves," was the last message a Ukrainian teacher living in Ireland received from her husband before he was killed while fighting for Ukraine.
Olha Skoryk now lives with her two children in Co Louth, where she still holds weekly online classes with her former students who have escaped the war in Ukraine and now live all over the world.
The young widow's story is among those included in the My Streets exhibition in Drogheda Library, which showcases work by Irish and Ukrainian photographers. Olha's photographs show the Skoryk's home in Ukraine as it was being built, when it was finished, and the aftermath of shelling following the outbreak of war.
"I was born and grew up in the city of Chernihiv in north Ukraine, which is only 50km from the border with Russia," she says.
"I was a primary school teacher there and I had everything in my life. My house, my husband, my children, a normal life.
"From the first day of the war, the city was attacked and surrounded by the Russian army. We couldn't get out. We were very scared and my children and I spent three weeks hiding in the basement of our house before we were saved by volunteers who helped us get to Kyiv and on to Poland.
"We were hiding in our basement at first, and then we moved to the centre of the city where we sheltered with over 1,000 others. There was no heating, electricity or even water at times," she recalls.
"People tried to go back to their houses and apartments at times if possible to try and find something to eat. We were bombed from aeroplanes up to six times a day.
"When I was able to charge my phone, I saw the last messages from my husband Vitalii (35) which said: 'Please, please stay alive and save yourselves'."
Olha explains her husband was an IT specialist working in the Czech Republic, but had volunteered in the army in 2014. When the war broke out in Ukraine, he felt he had to protect his family and his country, so he volunteered to fight, she says.
"When I was in Poland, I got a call from friends to say he had been killed in a battle in Popasna. He is our hero.
"No-one could get into the area until Russian forces left a month later. Then volunteers found his body in March 2022. He was only 35-years-old. We didn't get to say goodbye or go to a funeral.
"I thought I would be able to go back, that the war would end sooner, but now I can't go back yet. I must be alive for my children. I am both their mum and dad together now, and I must do everything to give my son Oleh (11) and daughter Valerie (16) a normal life."
On their life in Co Louth, Olha says: "Now we are in Ireland, where I wake up every morning grateful that I'm with my children in a peaceful place where we can work, study and just go outside and not be afraid.
"We are very happy here. My children have made friends and take part in a lot of clubs in the town. We have embraced a lot of Irish culture and traditions such as Hallowe'en and St Patrick's Day and it is important that we should do that.
"Valerie won an elite athlete scholarship at Our Lady's College in Greenhills in Drogheda and both my children have won their first Irish swimming medals.
"At the minute, I'm concentrating on improving my language as, before I got here, English was a subject at university that I had studied 20 years ago.
"When I arrived here, I continued taking my primary school class online and pupils had moved all over the world, so time differences were challenging.
"Then the children all started in local primary schools, but I still teach Ukrainian to them every Saturday morning online."
"I tell my Irish friends that when this is all over, they are very welcome to come and visit my country. The Irish have been so kind and welcoming to us and I can't thank them enough for that," she adds.
The My Streets exhibition continues in Drogheda Library until the end of the month.
