Say you're here and it's all over now
Speaking to the atmosphere
No one's here and I fall into myself
This truth drives me
Into madness
I know I can stop the pain
If I will it all away
- Evanescence
I have a mahogany jewelry box with a pewter fairy, resting atop, protecting its contents. This box hold three items: my father’s gold cross that only left his neck upon his death, engraved with his initials, a blue, beaded necklace from my mother, and an old, white, cotton handkerchief. The handkerchief is my maternal papou’s. It was given to me by my grandmother the day I arrived in Greece too late.
“Yiayia, hold tight. I’m on my way. See you in two days. I love you.”
Passport…tickets…suitcase…strength...Ok. Into the car and off to the airport I go.
Just over a month before, my maternal grandfather - who lives in Greece - went to the doctor in Athens because he had been losing weight, had problems swallowing, and wasn’t feeling quite right. Mind you my grandparents still climbed their own olive trees for picking and making fresh olive oil – I am lucky enough to get a few gallons each year, savoring the flavor brought out through their labors. My papou hated doctors, refusing to go to one of “those butchers” ever. But this time was different. They found that he had esophageal cancer, so advanced it necessitated surgery. The surgery left his immune system weaker than the cancer itself, and over the next six weeks he declined at an exponential rate.
My Aunt Elaine was already with my yiayia, taking turns with her at my papou’s bedside. I was speaking with them daily, sometimes two or three times a day, wanting to understand. I wanted to know each and every thing that was going on, and how I would be able to help.
“Come, Renee, come if you can. And come quickly,” was the only response I received from my aunt. I arranged my tickets, and asked my bosses if they could help me with my time off. Everything was set, including planning my reluctant mother’s trip 10 days from then. My aunt called just as I picked up my suitcase and headed for the door.
“Renee, we’re going back to the island.” She began. “We’re leaving tomorrow. See if you can catch the flight with us, if you get to Athens on time. They said papou could travel, and he wants to be home.”
I stopped in Heathrow first, and scurrying through the endless terminals to find my connecting flight. Why does Heathrow seem like such a nightmare? I have time for just one smoke, but I have to find one of those new smoking areas. Geesh. Ridiculous.
The second leg brought me safely to Athens. As I got my bags I heard the boarding call for the flight to Ikaria. I can make it. I know I can. I ran up to the counter and explained that my papou was on the flight being transferred to the hospital in Ikaria.
“Se parekalo, o papouV mou eina mesa stin aeroplano, eine poli askimoV, parekalo, borw na pou?” I beg the attendant at the Olympic booth to get me on the flight. But no, they couldn’t or they wouldn’t, I don’t know if my broken Greek was getting me anywhere but laughed at. I tried a few more times, and they even claimed to have called down to the plane, but refused my boarding. Damn me for not continuing my Greek studies.
I went to the Sofitel in the airport and got a room. I picked up some biscuits and water in the lobby store, but I was too unsettled to wander far from my room. I flipped through channels and caught some English on a BBC channel. With each new program or news segment, I surfed the channels again, looking for familiarity and distraction while waiting to try my aunt’s cell to ask about the flight to Ikaria and my papou.
I fell asleep sometime during the Greek news, which I couldn’t understand anyways. I awoke from a pounding heart and nasty head pain. How long had I slept? What time was it? I dialed my aunt’s number.
“Thea, how was the trip? I tried to get on the flight, I really did. They wouldn’t let me, but you guys were still boarding. Is everything ok? How’s papou? Is yiayia doing all right?”
“I can’t believe they didn’t let you on the flight. We thought you would make it. Stupid idiots! The flight wasn’t too bad and it wasn’t full.”
“And papou?”
“He’s home. He’s home now. I told him you were coming. I told him and he smiled.”
“Is he ok?”
“We’ll see you tomorrow. I have to go. I love you, baby.”
And that was it. Nothing else.
Several hours of tossing and turning, fear and anxiety, finally passed, getting me to the terminal for the Ikaria-bound flight. I boarded the four thousand year old plane, held together by rubber bands and superglue, and settled into my six inch seat (the planes that go to the island are small, carrying maybe fifty people max). The island is close by plane (9 hours by boat), basically, if you blink, you’ve landed already. However, these planes don’t allow you that luxury – of blinking. You hold your breath ascending, praying that a rubber band doesn’t snap, and the paper outer layer doesn’t crumble from wind shear, and as soon as you are ready to let out that breath, you can see a few hundred yards long, dirt path at the end of the island in the distance. One more inhale and you’re descending, begging any gods out there that the plane doesn’t miss that dirt path up ahead because what you see is supposed to be the landing strip. Plop…stop. These pilots are amazing.
I exited the plane and entered the small building known as the airport. My aunt and yiayia were waiting for me. They hug me tightly and ask me about my flight. I looked at both of them, and instantly knew what they desperately tried to hide.
“Yiayia? Yiayia, no.”
“Yes, baby, oh yes. I’m sorry, Renee. He’s home now.”
Yiayia’s paleness was more pronounced by the stark black head-to-toe outfit she was wearing. For the first time I saw lines in her face and realized that her hair was no longer Lucy red; her eyes were shallow, pronouncing circles and bags. My yiayia always looked fresh and well kept - now I didn’t see my yiayia only the idea of the woman whom I loved so dearly. Yiayia and my aunt unfolded the sorrow while holding me tight to their chests.
They arrived in Ikaria, and the ambulance took my papou to the hospital. My yiayia checked him into his room, gave him a kiss with love, and left to get their car. When the doctor came into his room to check on all the wires and machines, he leaned in to my papou and said, “Eftases, Xhrsto (You’ve arrived / you’re home).”
Papou smiled, took two breaths, and left us…moments before I called.
I was too late. The storm gathered strength in my mind and heart. I never got to see him, to tell him I loved him. Along the winding S-paths and cliff edges, we drove to the village of Pangia, silently. I looked out the car window telepathically calling my grandfather:
Not so long ago in a place not much changed
pain brought the mountains to the sea.
The winds raged chaotic change
relentlessly, unfeeling
The bitter numbness could not raise the fallen rubble, not calm Neptune’s caps
The stretch of village was veiled by somber stirrings
flooding with rising waters
The mahogany phoenix sprayed lovingly in fragrant offerings of devoted love
A shell lost at sea
The tempest sprang from within engulfing, consuming souls.
My memories of Ikaria were of warm sunshine, busy promenades, and soothing air, my summers full of vitality amidst an island far removed from modern life. My current arrival in Ikaria contrasted these images of joy and freshness with harsh winds, bone chilling cold, and grey; winter obscured my pleasant thoughts of my home away from home. The dead of winter.
My papou would be buried the following day, my grandparent’s anniversary. I tried to help where I could; funerals in Greece were much different than here in the states. We went to the market to purchase the needed food and beverage for the mourning to be held after the burial, next door at Popi’s; through the barren platia we walked store to store, looking for the best prices, and receiving condolences from villagers out in the winter chill. They praised my yiayia for having a daughter and granddaughter by her side during the somber events.
We awoke the next morning to ominous clouds in the sky and winds whipping around the mountain. I looked out the window from my yiayia’s dining room to where the mountain met the sea, the dark water, broken by white caps, churned, baring the fury of winter. The atmosphere of the outside world reflected our inside emotions, raging pain. We went down to the hospital to follow the car, which would carry my papou to the church just beyond their home in Panagia. As we entered the church the pall bearers placed the mahogany box on its stand, and we, my yiayia, my aunt, and me, were shown to the few chairs beside the coffin. Despite my sobbing, I still managed to observe how beautiful the wood-carved images of the phoenix, symbolizing perpetual rebirth, looked decorating my papou’s eternal bed.
The service was brief, but my tears met the ocean waves below. Many villagers from near and far arrived to share my yiayia’s grief. I knew so few of my grandparent’s friends and family that spent their lives on this small island in the eastern Aegean Sea. Their sorrow was pronounced, and mourning was real, not merely a term applied to those who have lost. Not a smile dotted lips or eyes meeting others’ tears; a grand respect for the dead demanded complete discipline.
The ancient world of Antigone and Medea rose before me. The ideals of time past still reigned in these mountains; there were dos and donts, rituals, expectations, and demands on the family that to my American upbringing stunned me. Skin must not show; all garments must be black; eyes must drown in sorrow; wailing expected; no raised heads or pleasant greetings. Love for the deceased would be measured in self-effacement. The wife, children, and immediate family have no entitlement to strength; the death of a man reflects the greatest, most unbearable loss and suffering. My yiayia will be subject to these laws for all her days in the old country, never turning from the pain, never recovering from loss, never to be whole again. Archaic and barbaric.
Once the ceremony concluded, the pall bearers braced the coffin on their shoulders, and we followed, all on foot, down the road, up the hill, step by step, to the cemetery, a parade of mourners, shadow forms, trailing the mahogany phoenix. They placed the coffin in the freshly turned dirt, and opened the box. I was warned by my aunt, “Don’t look!” But how could I not. O, I wish I had not. I thought they made a mistake; the man in the box was not my papou. How could it be? The face was grey and sagging, no embalming fluid or mortician placed makeup, frail, bones. The image haunts me. Some dirt, a few drops of oil, and a single flower, tossed in by my yiayia, rests with my papou for eternity.
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