This pain is just too real
There’s just too much that time cannot erase
I've tried so hard to tell myself that you're gone
But though you're still with me
I've been alone all along
- Evanescence
Getting older: responsibility, relationships, career, realizing mortality. I am barraged everyday with yet another strike to sanity - the insane are normal and all the rest are merely fools. You want me to smile and laugh and sing, and smell the flowers and watch the birds soar, maybe even get out of bed? Put a lime in the coconut and then we’ll talk.
Really. Drinking laws, smoking restrictions, drug abuse, skyrocketing therapy and happy pills, murder, theft, earthquakes and tsunamis, starvation, homelessness, pollution, guns, everywhere sadness and pain. I can’t wake up out of insomniac sleep and hug a tree now, can I? I did as a child. I was protected by parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles, and surrounded by cousins and friends. I never thought that those protections would crumble and leave me exposed to life. And no one prepared me. You just can’t teach life, you have to live it.
My cousin Reenie gave me a single star sapphire earring to wear. We are both named after our grandmother, Irene. Irene is Eirhnh in Greek, meaning peace. The earring is a memory, reflection, bond that ties us together and to our family; it reminds us of the symbol we stand for, and perhaps a secret key to my identity.
Eirhnh si ton agnonti= Peace be unto you.
I found myself waking up on the morning of March 3, 1999 a bit groggy and worse for wear. I had spent the night before celebrating my birthday with friends, consuming too many Amstels, enabling me to numb the sadness of my grandmother’s death. Upon waking, reality began to slap me around. My stomach barked, not just from over-consumption, but nerves. I could hear the movement of my parents, siblings, and aunt trying to get ready for the funeral: six people fighting silently for showers. Even with all the commotion, an eerie silence filled the air. I got out of bed and fumbled about the shower, accepting the inevitable.
After preparing myself, and finding my appearance appropriate for the church and respectful of my grandmother’s memory, I took my black-clad self upstairs to see if my father needed any help. I was not surprised to find him feeling weak and anxious. His new experimental chemo treatments had left him drained of life and as helpless as a child. On top of this physical torment he would be burying his mother. His emotions, similar to my own, were a mix of relief that she would no longer be suffering and sadness for her loss. The depression that was growing inside him debilitated him even more.
My mother and I helped get him dressed and cleaned up. We attached his suspenders to his dress pants, helped him button his shirt, put on his socks, clipped his fingernails, and attempted to tie his tie. I could not help it when the tears welled up in my eyes. This was my father.
When I arrived at the church, I looked around and saw all my cousins, now grown with families of their own, and many of my father’s boyhood friends. Over the years a large rift had developed between my father and his sisters and brother-in law. I remember the days of family gatherings and feasts around my grandparent’s table. Lately, none of the holidays were celebrated around a festive table; no visits over coffee and dessert were had. The Grand Canyon separated cousins and aunts and uncles. Now at the matriarch’s funeral we were united for the first time in uncountable years.
I finally brought myself to say, “Goodbye,” to my grandmother. I walked up to the casket with Erica for support. For the first time since I was told she had passed, I felt an ocean form in my eyes. She looked beautiful. I saw her just two weeks before; she had looked less than human: her hair was stringy and oily, face drawn and pasty, as she slumped in her wheelchair, cluelessly staring out the window. She smelled of age and neglect. Now she had a peaceful grin, her hair fashioned as it had been in my childhood, her make-up was soft and natural, and she was dressed in her favorite dress, a bold purple and fuchsia flowered party dress. This was the grandmother whom I had loved. She was finally at peace and accepted it. I was glad to have this as my parting image of my grandmother. I felt our connection even more so at this moment, for I was named after her, and she had now passed it on to me.
The priest finished the service with a eulogy that actually made the family snicker. He either didn’t know my grandmother that well or he was just trying to console us with beautiful words. He talked about my grandparents as a team and never speaking harsh words to each other, which was laughable; their relationship of 60+ years was never without raised voices or name calling (we wondered if the priest just really didn’t understand Greek). Then he went on to say that my grandmother never complained, especially about her miserable condition in old age. This, of course, couldn’t be further from the truth. My grandmother would constantly say, “What life is this? Why did God do this to me? Why can’t I just die instead of living like this,” and others just as these. I looked around at my father and his two sisters to see them shaking their heads and even giggling over this. It lightened the somber atmosphere.
After the absurd eulogy everyone went up one last time to say, “Goodbye.” I hadn’t realized how many people had come into the church during the service. There were friends of the family that I hadn’t seen since my adolescence; people that my father grew up with and were his best friends, with whom he’d lost touch. At this point the sorrow seemed to shift from that of my grandmother’s death to my father for his pain and the consuming cancer that afflicted him. Wave after wave of people would give their condolences to my father’s family, then would face him and clasp his frail frame. They didn’t want to move on; they were holding onto my father as if they were holding onto his life. It became the morbid foreshadowing of his death. And the tears welled in my eyes. Even though my father has always been a difficult man these people still loved him. Everyone seemed to share the same guilt for letting the insignificance create gaps in time. When people came up to me they hugged me too tightly and said, “I’m sorry.” When I looked into their eyes I knew why. I understood the years and the human ways of trying to ignore and conquer time. I felt the pain of people regretting the things that had been placed between themselves and unconditional love. It was not my own life that flashed before me, but my father’s.
The burial was quick as the March wind attempted to blow the sorrow away from us. The rain that was expected waited until we filled our cars and drove on. The flowers that we placed on top of the casket were as bright and colorful as the dress my grandmother wore inside her bed of white satin. There were no more tears. She was at eternal rest. We were going to miss her, but now there was no more suffering. The crowd of family and friends departed the cemetery with arms around each other reminiscing about the grandmother whom we all loved.
Everyone reconvened at Alexander’s for the memorial luncheon. My father went home because he couldn’t eat or swallow. When I told his friends this they were sad because they wanted to spend time with him, to wipe away the years that had passed between them. Before the meal my uncle, my father’s brother-in-law, made a speech. He gave this long-winded speech in Greek, but then followed with the important parts in English.
He said, “George and I may have never seen eye to eye or gotten along very well, but we do share something that goes beyond personal differences: we deeply loved the same woman, his mother, Irene. This woman did everything and anything for her family, and sacrificed much of her self for it. It is time to learn this lesson that she left for us; love each other, family is most important, and never let differences interfere with this love.” Then he came over to me, gave me a hug, and said, “Your father and I may not like each other, but I love him, please tell him that.” No one else heard these final words, but I spoke them to my father when I got home – a tear followed a line in his cheek and he smiled.
My cousins and I sat together, comparing stories about our grandmother. We laughed at her superstitions, smirked at her incessant candy distribution, and chuckled at her unwavering faith in the uses of Jean N’ate. We walked down memory lane, talking about the family feasts during the holidays at my grandparents’ home. We poked fun at each other as if we were children again at our grandparent’s house and took turns rambling over our grandmother’s words of wisdom. The morning had faded into afternoon and now evening. We were celebrating our grandmother’s life by allowing her to bring our family back together.
Life’s lessons are what we choose them to be.
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