Αἰωνία ἡ μνήμη (Memory Eternal) Chapter 1

In a world where all is borrowed,

And time like elusive dust seems to
Just slip through out fingers,
All we really have are these precious moments
Where we can make fertile the soil
In the garden of our hearts,
That here love may make its home
And here the mortal seed may flourish.
For life like a magnificent mysterious cloud holds
Its shape and form only long enough for us to blink,
And all our precious memories are but shadows of
Time that will drift away like fallen leaves returning
To the emptiness from which they came.
Thus we are, like innocent children flowering
In the garden of souls.
-- Azam Ali


It’s a curse to think sometimes. How many years have gone by and I know nothing more and nothing less. Of course that’s a lie. I know much more, but feel as though it is much less: more information only leads to more questions – never-ending, cycling.


The crystalline flakes fall from above, resting like cotton on the yard. It’s been snowing all day, and now as the sun is low on the horizon, I hear neighbors starting up snow blowers in harmony with shovels scraping the pavement. The seemingly futile effort to remove the whiteness from sidewalks and driveways has begun. These sounds are an intrusion in the quiet. I always say, “It sounds like snow.” Snow sounds like nothing: peace, solitude, wiping away all that exists, a non-space and non-time, a pure moment when you understand the vastness of life and your presence in it. As far as you can see the dirt of everyday life is erased and a new world emerges. Normal commotion on the streets is paralyzed and for a time families sit together and watch a movie or share a meal; parents teach their children to sled and make a snowman and snow angels. The frustration and stress of our modern world becomes frozen in time. We can simply “be.”

As the sounds of the blower engines and shovels continue to echo, I’m reminded of my father bundled up head to toe, looking like the sta-puff marshmallow man with all his layers.

“Come on, girls!”

“It’s still snowing…”

“Too cold…”

“I’ll come out when this is over.”

“Yeah! Can we build a snowman?”

My sisters and I grumble or hesitate or jump at my father’s request to help him clear away the snow. There are four of us: me, being the eldest and most troublesome of the lot; Erica, the quiet Schroeder; Chrissy, spunky and playful; and Connie, too young to see any reason why being outside in the snow wouldn’t be fun. My father is so excited to “play” with his new snow blower, he hands us all shovels, like this is really sand and we want to dig. He doesn’t really give us any instruction, just to clear the porch and off he goes, strutting along, making pathways, and piling up snow-rubble for us to make forts. He doesn’t really care that we’re running across the street to assemble a neighborhood snowball fight because he and the other dad’s are shouting pleasantries across the way.

“Morning, George. Get that from Sears?”

“Sale. I’ll help you with your sidewalk if you’d like.”

“Thanks! I might get myself one of these babies.”

For some reason they are enjoying the “work”. After the sun dims in the sky, my father calls us back in the house. Dad and daughters track into the laundry room - leaving a trail of soiled water, hats, scarves, gloves, boots - sniffling as the blast of warmth emanates from the fireplace where we huddle together crimson-cheeked next to the fire.

I wonder when those smiling memories began to fade, when the moments of snow ceased to bring my family together in this wonderland. I really don’t need to look farther than my years as a teenager that linger darkly in a cave that I keep contained behind a boulder. Not that I was any better or worse than your average teen; it was the times and my upbringing that collided, and the result was painful to both myself and my parents, especially my father. Teen angst set in and me, his eldest, his star, his angel of purity, was turned into a stranger before him. Neither he nor my mother could comprehend the enigma before them that was me, and I didn’t make it simple, rebelling against my culture, religion, tradition, and myself. That’s when the snow irritated me.

“Renee, get down here and help.”

“I’m on the phone. The girls can help you.”

No more would I run outside and take the shovel handed to me as a toy. I didn’t want to play, I wanted to go shopping, hang with my friends at the mall, and didn’t want to be suffocated by family togetherness.

Then again, what would you expect from a child sheltered from the streets by Greek Orthodoxy and traditions, and sent to a private Catholic school for a better education – at least better than the public schools at the time. It was the seventies and my parents were new to the whole parenthood event; I was the honeymoon baby after all. I may have been sheltered, but only because they too were confined by their Leave it Beaver ideals. I opened a month-old Tupperware of leftovers in their faces when I turned 15 and a year of public high school had enlightened their precocious little angel.

I can’t help but to wonder if my parents’ June-and-Ward-Cleaver mentality instilled a slight romantic view of family in me, or perhaps, it is adult acceptance of my Greek heritage that makes me seek a blood-bound family cohesion. Mind you, I didn’t spend my teens in a remotely ideal functioning family, but for some reason I believe in one.

I hold onto the notion that even though my father considered me demon seed and possessed by Beelzebub himself, it was merely because I grew up in a different time, and love was all I needed. And guaranteed, I didn’t know it myself. I wanted to experiment and explore, curiosity was my downfall, resulting in years of family and personal therapy and distaste of all things familial. Was it me or the fact that my parents didn’t know how to teach love? Should it be innate?

I refer to the 12 months beginning March 1999 and ending the following February as the year of sorrow, but also the year of my new awareness. I painfully watched my paternal grandmother pass, followed by my father, who was in turn followed by his father - 12 months and an entire family decimated. I was in my late twenties and trying to grasp getting older and finding my identity while coping with mortality; it wreaks havoc on an already sensitive spirit.

I was angry at my father’s god for taking him and causing so much suffering; my mother’s nervous breakdown and her nonchalance; my sisters’ youth and its selfishness; my maternal grandparents for moving back to Greece; and life for being so incomprehensible. I was alone and without guidance – at least in my teens I thought I knew it all and was completely unaware that immortality was a thing for fiction only; I lived carefree and reckless. Now my world went topsy tervy and I began to confront the demons hidden deep under folds of grey matter.

As a child I spent Sundays witnessing the endless 3 hour religious services spoken entirely in Greek, or in Sunday school classes applying the differences between what I was learning from the private Catholic school I attended versus Greek Orthodoxy. The Christian belief system embedded itself in my consciousness. I was a model daughter to my father, innocent and wholesome, and capable of speaking his mother tongue after years of Wednesday night Greek school. He was proud of me.

eva, tdw, tria, tesera...deka penta - smack! I became a stranger and danger to my father and his sensibilities.

Let’s just say that all things Greek were evil to me, along with any traditions that I spit on as I applied the notion of rules-are-meant-to-be-broken.

“Renee, let’s go! We’re leaving. Get your ass down here.”

“I don’t want to go to church. I’m not sitting through 3 hours of babble.”

“Don’t you speak like that. Ungrateful heathen. You don’t have a choice. Renee, you disgust me! Get out of my face. You are not my daughter!!”

“You don’t understand me. We live in America; I hate those people at church, and I hate you!” These words regularly rang through the house; my father would belt at the top of his lungs and beat walls and doors, trying to exorcize the demon before him, the changeling that stole his precious first born. His face would contort and lethal steam rose from his ears, thus began the converting of simple life into an inferno.

At 19 a note left on the kitchen table advised my parental units that I no longer cohabited in the family abode.

It was the year 1995 and I found my image in the mirror foreign. I had been living with my boyfriend, Brian, who had just the Christmas before become my fiancé. I spent several years of my life with him only to realize that my dream of husband and father was crumbling under a lifestyle more suited for Lifetime TV. My rebellious teenage self was growing into a woman and learning that life cannot exist on beer and smokes alone, and I craved the family I had left behind 6 years ago. In May I packed my bags.

I stood in the center hall of the apartment I shared with my fiancé and took one last glance around. The dark paneled walls and brown carpets were gloomy, not warm, not home. All the flowers, paintings, and knick-knacks that once adorned my living space laid in boxes that lined the walls. I peered into each of the rooms to be sure that nothing was forgotten. The first bedroom was scattered with baseball cards and fishing equipment that had lost the organization of the cabinets and shelves that were moving with me. The main bedroom had only the bed and dresser. I decided to let him keep them since the bed stood for something we no longer shared. The kitchen was bare, save for a service for one and an old picnic table with broken and chipped boards. The family-room furniture was all that remained: his TV, an entertainment center, sectional sofa, and second hand coffee tables at least made the room bearable. I felt only slightly pained to realize that he was left with nothing, but the fact remained that we had created our home with my family heirlooms, and they were coming with me.

After my final check, I walked into the family room and found Brian sitting on the couch, drinking his cursed beer. He wouldn’t even look at me. OOOOOOO, how that enraged me!

“Well, I’m packed up…I…I guess I’ll put the last of my stuff in the truck and head out…”

“Whatever…humph.” His only reply.

I took the last box downstairs, and drove away - tears streaming down my face.

There’s truth to the saying, “When it rains, it pours.” For at the same time that my personal life was in shambles so was that of my family; my moving home coincided with my father’s parents moving in with us, and facing the shock of the return of my father’s cancer. Surreal, nightmarish, chaos - all at once our lives were upside-down.

Here’s the Dali for you. Grandfather - Alzheimer’s and Muscular Dystrophy; Grandmother – blind, dementia, and congestive heart failure; Father – esophageal cancer; mother – nervous breakdown; me – 23 years old with identity and guilt complex; Erica – living in Boston to attend college; Chrissy and Connie – teen angst. The house consisted of barely functional dysfunction: Greek and English seared the air in the confusion brought about by the lives forced together. My mother and I took turns being nurses for my grandparents while denying my father’s illness.

“Renee, please help your grandmother to the bathroom. I’m getting their dinner ready.”

“Mom, I can take care of them tonight. Go relax.”

“Thank you. You’re grandfather is having another episode today; he’s calling for Armando again. Who is this person?”

“We’ll never know.”

“Come on, yiayia, let’s get you to the bathroom.”

My father was so distraught seeing them in such poor health that he could barely be in the same room with them. Instead of being compassionate towards them he was angry, and suffering his own illness, which fed his anger further still.

“Dad, this is your home now. You are home. Stop talking like a crazy man. I did all this for you.”

“Where are my keys? I have to go home now. Who are you?”

“Dad, it’s George. See, there’s your TV and bedroom. Maria is getting you dinner.”

“Where’s my car keys? What craziness is this?”

“Stop that!” My father pounded on the wall yelling and stormed out of the room.

My grandparents became lepers in their own home because of the way my father acted towards them, and because of how our frustration and disgust with them became visible; we had become slaves to them. This was too much responsibility for an already troubled household; it was sad, shameful, and heartbreaking.

By the fall of this same year, my father had pulled through the cancer once again - remission. I decided to go back to school. My mother was losing her mind. The fighting and confusion generated a vortex of anxiety when you walked into the house. For three years following my move home I was living in a war zone: father vs. daughter, husband vs. wife, child vs. parent, health vs. illness, and sanity vs. chaos.

It was during these three years that I was constantly reminded of why I left home at eighteen. My father and I were always fighting while I was growing up. My mother and father had not had a happy marriage for years because of strong differences of opinion – Greek traditions versus American living. Not a breath of air in my house was taken without consequence.

“I’m out of here. Going to the mall.”

“You’re staying home tonight, this nonsense of you being out all the time is stopping now.”

“George, she’s a teenager. Let her spend time with her friends. She doesn’t need to be home tonight.”

“Shut up, Maria. This is your fault the way she’s become. She’s disrespectful and careless, and you allow this. I’m the man of the house. You listen to me.”

“George, your temper is the problem. You are the one at fault for our problems.”

My father would become so incensed at times that he would scream and yell, shaking the whole house. I remember counting the days until graduation not just to be out of school, but to be closer to leaving home. My father was a bitter man, no doubt due to his lack of childhood, from being an immigrant and working from thirteen years old to help support his family. He was angry at the world, and from watching how he treated his own parents, I saw that he was angry at them too. He was leading me into the anger and resentment track that he fell into himself. His inability to understand the nature of life was destroying himself and his family.

Now I was voluntarily back in the environment I escaped, and loosing grip slowly. The apocalypse was sure to be soon.

By the spring of 1998, whether anyone wanted to admit it or not, my father was taking a turn for the worse. He was having problems swallowing, was tired all the time, and losing weight quickly. He went to the doctor’s after accepting the fact that something was obviously wrong. When he returned from his appointment he walked in the door solemnly and went straight to his room. The tumor was suffocating his esophagus. He could no longer eat; a man once over 200lbs., was now looking at the scale reading 120lbs; he was skin and bone, frail and weak. My grandparents had no concept of what was going on around them and fed off our anxiety: my grandfather would violently strike at anyone who came into his section of the house with his cane, yelling, “Who are you? Get out of my house.” My grandmother would throw hysterical fits of her own, claiming “What life is this? Why does the God Almighty give me this life? This is no life.” My mother could no longer function in the household and the house became as chaotic looking as our emotions. She locked herself in her room, covering her head with the blankets and pillow to block out reality. My grandfather talked to the air, while my grandmother complained. My mother was shutting down, and I had to pick up the pieces.

Once the summer hit, my father had a feeding tube put in so that he could try to gain some strength back to fight his disease. It was also agreed upon that my grandparents would go into a nursing home. Now that the stress of caring for my grandparents was gone, it was time for me to face the denial I was in about my father. I knew he was sick, but I never really believed that it would kill him; he was a tough man, and I didn’t think that anything could bring him down. Even though I was always fighting with my father and harbored resentment towards him, I couldn’t accept the fact that he could die. I had spent so many years hating him for his condescending attitude, his perfectionist ideals, his irritated tone of voice, his overly critical expectations, and his anxiety over insignificant things that I never got the chance to love him. I was watching the powerful, authoritative man whom I called my father waste away and turn into a frightened child. I began to realize that all of his intimidating ways were just a shield to protect him. Having lived with his parents for an extended amount of time, I found that they didn’t know how to show love or affection either. My father had learned from them so these characteristics had been passed on. He had an unrealistic sense of control that led him to believe that he could control life and its circumstances and everyone around him. He had almost passed these ideas onto me until I saw through his facade. I began to love him.

When my father had gone into surgery to have the feeding tube put in, “something happened” -- he came out of surgery with paralyzed vocal chords. He was left with only a raspy whisper for a speaking voice. He couldn’t even do the one thing that he loved so much, yell. In trying to get himself heard, he would stomp on the floor or bang on the walls to get our attention or express frustration. The kitchen in our house tends to always be thick with conversation and activity. Here is where my father would become the most agitated. Since he couldn’t speak over the multiple conversations going on between his family members, he would become red in the face and knock things around ‘til it was quiet enough for him to be heard. I wonder if this was God’s way of silencing his unjustifiable temper? Eventually he learned that his temper was putting undue stress on his body and resorted to waving his arms in a “this-is-no-use…forget-it…to-hell-with-you” way. It forced him to listen to other people for a change instead of silencing them. I began to say, “I love you” to him whenever I was given the chance. I even would give him a kiss on the forehead to reassure him that I meant it. He never really said it back, but I could see it in his face the way it softened as he smiled.

By fall we learned that the chemo and radiation failed. The doctors decided to put him on an experimental drug that made him so ill and weak that it broke my heart to look at him. When he would get a treatment he would stay in bed for the next ten days. He would just lie there on his side with the blankets pulled up about his head. He looked like an ashen ghost of a human lying there in bed. The pain emanating from his body seemed to penetrate my own being: I would shutter upon entering his room. Sometimes he would sit in the big armchair next to his bed with his hands over his head and his elbows resting on his knees, leaning over a waste bucket, sobbing. His esophagus was blocked; he couldn’t swallow or vomit. This only added to his misery. There was no consoling the weak creature that replaced my father. There were times when I couldn’t even go into his room to set up his feeding tube for the night for fear of the tears that would roll down my cheeks. The odor of sickness in his room and his own graying aura would keep me at bay. Now that I wanted to love him, I was too distraught to.

We were on borrowed time already, and the owner apparently wanted it back. There were no other experimental studies available, and both Sloane Kittering and Fox Chase turned him away. All we could do was wait. Regardless of the pain, my father would still muster the courage to move on; he would be showered and dressed for four hours of work at Raytheon each day. He still tried to maintain that false sense of control; it was the only thing that he had left. Somehow it kept me going too. It gave me strength to watch him fight.