Αἰωνία ἡ μνήμη (Eternal Memory) Chapter 6

♪♪ I grieve
For you
You leave
Me
So hard to move on
Still loving what’s gone
Said life carries on ♪
- Peter Gabriel “I Grieve"

August 4th, my father’s 59th birthday. How truly karmic being buried on your birthday. I drug myself into the shower and got ready for the church. I walked around promising everyone in the house that I would bark at anyone who pissed me off. They cocked their head and nodded, saying, “Uh, yeah. Sure you will.” I was monstrous and unwilling to accept the day’s planned events. Not even my yiayia, who arrived from Greece, sometime during these blurry days, could console me.


Arriving at the church, I couldn’t bring myself to go inside. Through the doors I could see the casket set in the middle of the marble floor before the altar. I could see the bright array of flowers that we had ordered for my father—we had told the florist, “think roy-g-biv” for a color scheme, a rainbow—my father would have expected nothing less from his wonderful harem of women. But I couldn’t go in there. I couldn’t see him lying there—dead.

I had a cigarette before going in and forced myself to stand beside him. He looked good, but it wasn’t him. No matter what version of life after death I choose to believe in, the fact remained that it wasn’t him lying there; it was just the physical shell of what I called “Daddy.”

I stared at him for a while when I leaned forward to kiss him as I always had on the forehead. Not only was he cold, but he didn’t feel human. I recalled Reenie’s voice in my mind saying, “Whatever you do, don’t touch his skin. At yiayia’s funeral I tried to hold her hand, and I will never get the feeling out of my memory. Don’t do it.” His skin had become taut and felt strange beneath my lips. I began to gently stroke his arm and head and again talk to him, speaking the same words of the past few days, like a broken record, replaying the same phrase - echoes in the scratch of the recording - running numbly from my lips and tongue. Again I felt I couldn’t leave him. I thought I’d stay there forever. But the masses were gathering, friends, family, strange faces surfaced from the back of the church, searching for recognition, blundering over hellos and grief-filled embraces. I reluctantly kissed him again and walked away.

I went to the front pew where my mother and sisters sat greeting people. I couldn’t bear it, all these people that kept coming up to me with red eyes saying, “I’m sorry.” I didn’t want to deal with all these people: my father’s co-workers, family that I hadn’t seen in years, friends of mine and my sisters, an endless parade of grievers, but they couldn’t know the depths of mine. Where had they been all this time while my father suffered? Their absence during my father’s last months began to anger me. I hated them for visiting him after he was gone.

I started walking out of the church. On my way someone grabbed my arm. I turned around to see one of my oldest and dearest friends, Argie. We had lost touch about twelve years before and I missed her terribly. We hugged each other so tight and for so long I felt the twelve years compress into nothing. Just seeing her and holding her so close to my heart brought monsoonal tears of joy and sorrow. No words passed from our lips while inside the church, just tears and embraces. We walked outside arm-in-arm like the school girls we used to be. She had to leave to go to work.

“I love you, Renee. I had to come here to see you.”

I didn’t care what had come between us; friends, good friends are hard to come by, and she was one of them. The arrival of past, present and future gathering for my father’s memory had begun.

For the next two hours I stood out front smoking cigarettes and greeting people before they went into the church – I couldn’t bring myself to return to the front pew. My dull recognition of faces allowed little more than a numb hug and absent voice saying, “yes,” to the figures passing before me. I felt safer out there in front because no one had seen him yet, so I greeted people still in denial, not after they had faced crushing reality. The flow of people seemed to never end. I saw family from both near and far. I saw all the people who belonged to the church whose lives my father had touched in so many ways, most of which I hadn’t realized, since I had left the church in my teens. People just came and said goodbye to a man whose immortality rests in not just his family, but friends and strangers too. For the first time I saw my father as the man he really was: a strong leader, a compassionate heart, a man of will, a power to achieve goals thought unthinkable, a father, a husband, a friend. I had never realized how loved my father really was—and still is.

I was ushered back into the church when services were about to begin. I took my seat beside my mother and stared off into the distance in hopes to catch a glimpse of my father looking out at all the love that was around him. I hoped for just a moment to see him smile and know that he was alright, and that he knew we would be alright because of the fantastic extended family that he had created for us. But instead, no, I felt empty.

The priest made the most wonderful eulogy. Father Bob shared my father’s conversations with him in hopes that my father’s voice could be heard above the sorrow. He gave a message to my mother saying, “George knew that times weren’t always that good, but he loved Maria with all his heart, and hoped she could forgive him for his not always showing it.” He went on to talk about my father’s 35 years of employment at Raytheon: his accomplishments and the friendships he had made. Beyond this he called our home the “estrogen house,” something that my father always said because he was the only male in the house with five women and four female pets. He shared with the many people there that day all my father had done to help the church and make it what it is today. When he spoke of my father he made him shine like a bright light, and made me realize that if I could only be half of what my father was, I could move mountains.

When the ceremony was over everyone was invited up for one last goodbye. I couldn’t bear to think that in a few moments I would stand up there too for mine. I watched the people gaze upon my father with such love that I couldn’t be more proud to say “that man is my father.” I felt each painful goodbye because all these people were linked through my father. He had touched them too.

The moment finally came when I had to stand with my mother and sisters before the casket for one last time. I would never hold his hand or kiss his forehead again. As I looked at him I realized that he wouldn’t be there to see me graduate from college, or walk me down the aisle on my wedding day. I knew that he would never hold a grandchild or retire with my mother. He was gone, and I could never share my future with him. I had a Daddy no more. One last kiss and the casket closed.

The cemetery service was brief. Yet again I couldn’t bring myself to walk away from him. I stood there and watched them lower the casket deep in to the ground. The clank of the rotary and belts supporting the casket rang in my ears: dirt, bugs, ultimate solitude, death, how, why, confusion, fear, incomprehensible. If I listen hard enough I think I can still hear the crank grind as the weight of the casket bared down.

A lot of people came back to the house for a luncheon afterward. It was wall-to-wall people who loved my father. A few of us even joked that since it was my father’s birthday he would have been eating a steak and singing like crazy because that would have been the best birthday present that he could have ever gotten.

In many ways the house reflected life, not death: a celebration, a birthday party, my father’s life and legacy. Traditional Greek funereal fare of fish and cheese filled the tables, which friends had set up while my family was still at the cemetery. Wine and Metaxa wafted through the air as people toasted to memories and love.

My sisters and I lost ourselves in our own sense of madness with our friends by our side to guide us through this stage of grieving. We laughed together over evermore drunken comments and antics – the numbing of the soul. Erica, drunk on migraine meds and wine, fairy danced about the porch, thus inventing the “interpretive dance” that became her trademark for expression, unable to comprehend her emotions; Chrissy mingled in and out of friends and family numbing herself with whisky, conversation and spiritless laughter; Connie, still in her prime youth, sat mostly silent, regarding the chaos in her home, the spectacle of life, lacking the ability to cope with the sensations running through her heart. I can’t remember myself. The surreality of my condition lacked a connection. I was watching the movie of tragedy and pain unfold, unable to create sense in a senseless time.

Later that night when the house was quiet again, I tried to close my eyes and rest. I kept tossing and turning and feeling like I wanted to be in the cemetery sleeping next to him. I felt as if I had broken a promise—to be there. But deep down I knew that I was there for him, I just wasn’t ready to let go. For many months I continued to wake abruptly at four o’clock in the morning just as I did that first night. I don’t know if my dad was saying, “hello,” or some other strange coincidence. It happened, and sometimes still eerily occurs in the darkest nights: the mysterious wonder of the mind.

I drive myself insane wondering where he is now, if he can hear me, see me, and what is out there in the beyond.

If I’m locked away somewhere deep in the recesses of my mind someone will be able to tell my story. The insanity never rests, haunting me, tormenting me each day of my life. I wonder if I will find my peace and come to understand this hollow in my heart; the pain is still so great—I should feel relief for the release of my father’s suffering—but I don’t. Selfishness...it’s a disease.