The mom of a 3-year-old boy tossed to his death from a Manhattan high-rise by her suicidal husband bade a heartbreaking farewell Thursday.
Tears streaming down her face, she leaned over her son’s open casket to fix his tousled red hair and softly kissed his cheek.
“God rewards her for her suffering,” Bishop Jerome Shaw, who helped preside over the service, said of Svetlana Kanarikov. “The thing we need most is mercy.”
White roses and daisies surrounded the small, white casket in which little Kirill Kanarikov lay, as friends and family crowded a Russian Orthodox church on the Upper East Side to mourn the boy.
He died Sunday after his unhinged dad, Dmitriy Kanarikov, 35, tossed him from the roof of the 52-story building and then leaped to his own death.
Svetlana, 32, was the first to approach the open coffin.
She lingered about an hour later, watching protectively as the coffin was closed for the last time.
Svetlana and Dmitriy were married in the same church five years ago.
The Brooklyn family appeared to be living an idyllic life until the marriage fell apart over the summer, and degenerated into a bitter divorce and custody battle.
Svetlana, in a statement, said this week that her husband was controlling, and had threatened her.
Sources said he had also threatened to kill the boy if she didn’t sign over their house and other possessions to him.
The funeral at the Cathedral of the Icon of Our Lady of the Sign was conducted in Slavonic, the Slavic liturgical language used in the Russian church, a priest said.
Friends and family said little of Kirill’s horrific death, focusing instead on comforting the heartbroken mother.
A photo of a smiling Kirill was on display beside the coffin.
Mourners carrying candles offered hugs to the despondent mom.
The bishop said tragedies like this “can happen at any time. It is very sad, of course.
“If somebody is under a lot of pressure or has gotten himself worked up a lot, or for some other reason they simply can snap, they simply can lose control and do things they wouldn’t otherwise do.”
The bishop said “it must have [been the case] — because why otherwise?”