Life goes on

It's 5:30 AM. I woke up a while ago, and I can't get back to sleep. I feel fine, except I have soreness in my throat which I seriously hope it's due to lack of water, rather than a cold of some kind.

It's Easter Sunday in Greece. I talked to mom and dad and Mikie yesterday. I could hear the dynamites exploding in the background. Yes, you read that right, I did not mean to say fireworks. In Kalymnos, the Greek island I was born, custom has it that we celebrate Easter in a most...peculiar way. Men in their 20's, sometimes even older, climb up on the mountains and throw sticks of dynamites up in the air. Needless to say there's been a competition brewing there for decades. The team or mountain as we say, that makes the most noise "wins". If you still don't believe me, search on YouTube "Pasxa Kalymnos 2008" and enjoy the show. :-)

I'm downstairs in the family room. I can hear a lonely bird chirping. I guess someone else is up all by themselves too. I bet his little nest friends are cursing the way he, or she can't keep his or her mouth shut right about now. At least I don't chirp! :-)

I can hear footsteps. It's either Natalie getting out of her bed to come and join us in ours, or Brian realizing I'm not by his side. I'd put my chips on the first one. She really likes to come in our bed early in the morning and spend a couple of hours cuddling with mom and dad.

If you haven't realized by now, I have nothing that's worth your time to read. I'm just up early, and maybe that in itself has some deep significance that I truly fail to understand, other than of course the sad observation that when you feel sick you tend to have restless nights and useless early awakenings. So, that's that.

I sat down to write some e-mails yesterday, and by the time I was done, I felt so stupid repeating myself in every single e-mail that I decided to send a link to this blog to Gramma. She's the only one I felt like sharing this. I don't know how she does it, but she gets me. The fact that she sees her sister's struggle with cancer in mine I guess gives us both the chance to revisit old ghosts that we had chosen to bury in the past, but now feel that need for them to be addressed.

I can't count how many times since this ordeal of mine has started, I've had the picture of my poor uncle Michael come to my head. I remember I was only 13-14 when I first found out that he had cancer. He left with my aunt to Athens in order to find some "good" doctors there, leaving my 2 cousins to be looked after by my Grandma who came to stay with them. He was diagnosed with lung cancer, that later metastasized to his brain, and spent months in a hospital there.

My brother, who was in his first year in college, used to visit him a lot. One of the times Antonis came back he brought home a small bag with a lock of my uncle's hair that he picked off the ground when he chose to shave his head during his chemo. My mom still has it.

I still have his picture in my head, riding his bike to work every morning, then coming back in the afternoon to eat in a hurry and then go out in his yard and work for hours at a time. I almost always remember him on his knees sweating to plant things, strawberries, carrots, pretty flowers and trees, or paving the walk way to the house, carrying rocks, and painting.

The next time I saw my uncle, he was a dying man. They brought him home in a stretcher, he was half his size, with a gauntly pale, yellow face, and no hair. The laid him on Kaki's bed, and I don't think I ever saw him standing again. He used to slip in and out of consciousness, moaning in his sleep. My aunt used to go in and out of the room bringing him pills and a cup of water, and rubbing her hands raw with alcohol to keep off the germs.

I remember the few times he would open his eyes and see me there he would start telling stories of funny things I used to do as a kid. How I used to say "shhh" with my back teeth instead of "ssss" with my front, how I used to beg him to let me try the carrots he had planted, always funny stories. It felt weird to be remembered that way. Up until then, those would be the kind of stories a teenager like me dreaded. This was the first time I heard those stories and felt proud that they were important enough for my dying uncle to remember.

One day I came home from school early. I had found a puppy in the street outside our schoolyard and I was excited to take it home and beg for my mother to let me keep it. When I walked in the house there was no one there. I went outside to our porch and looked at my aunt's house (our houses are right next to each other, since my Grandpa who built both houses wanted to have his 2 daughters live close) and saw a neighbor getting water from my uncle's well. She looked at me and said "your uncle..." and then gestured with her hands "it's over".

I was shocked! Here I was with this cute little puppy in my hands, all excited to show everybody yet another pet I brought home, or rather saved from the streets, as I always liked to say to my tired mom in hopes she'd let me keep it. I didn't know what to do. I had even brought a friend along to ease the process of persuasion. I could always count on the fact that my parents would go easy on me if I had someone outside the family there with me.

I put the puppy in the bathroom and walked into my aunt's house. I saw my aunt dressed in black. She looked at me sadly and said "Paei o theios", " your uncle's gone". I hugged and kissed her. I looked and saw his body laid in a casket, trimmed with white flowers, right there in their living room. Men and women with sad faces, dressed in black, sitting all around, and my parents among them. My dad stood up and hugged my uncle's body and cried. It's the only time I've seen my father cry. Even my mom was shocked. I don't think she had ever seen him cry either. She came and talked to me.

I felt really lost. I had sneaked out of school during recess. What do I do? "Go back to get my stuff," I guessed. Then it dawned on me. Petros, my cousin was still at school. I had found a purpose, a way to be helpful! I turned to my mom and said I'll go back to school and tell Petro. I'll bring him back home.

I left running and didn't stop until I saw the school's steps. I walked in and timid as I was back then, I immediately felt this had been a really bad idea. Now I actually had to talk to the Principal and ask him to let me go find my cousin in his classroom and break to him the news that his dad had died. I think God felt sorry for everyone involved, so when I finally mustered the courage to walk into the Principal's office, he informed me that his other uncle, uncle Michael's brother, had already come by and picked him up.

I went back to my classroom and told the teacher I had to leave, so I packed my stuff and went back home. Petros was already there when I arrived. After talking to him for a few minutes he went in his bedroom, broke down and started crying. I stood there not knowing what to do. I don't think I had ever hugged him before; I was usually his favorite past time, and not in a good way. One time he and my brother had tied me up on a tree terrorizing me for several minutes that felt like hours to me, threatening me that they would let spiders loose on me if I didn't quit following them around and ruining their playtime! But I was old enough to understand that this was all in the past. I hugged him and lied to him that it would be all right.

We hanged out all day and all night. I remember it was a windy night, but not cold at all. We were out wondering around the front yard, amazed at our newly found freedom to be up so late, not in our beds and not under the constant adult supervision we were used to. They even let us drink coffee! We mostly joked and laughed, but we were also a little spooked by the sound of the howling wind. It was awesome! One of the best times I ever had with my cousin. Since then of course we've grown pretty close. I even was his "koumbara" at his wedding, in other words I was an official witness to his marriage to his wife, which in Greece at least is as important as being a godmother to his children.

The next day was the funeral. We dressed in our Sunday clothes and got ready to go. My cousin Kaki who was up all night sitting by her mom and had nothing to eat all day, just collapsed. I remember walking in the church and only a few minutes after that she leaned on my shoulder and whispered in my ear "I need to get out of here. I don't feel well." I almost carried her out and then supported her all the way back home. She felt clammy and she was shaking. I was a little bummed because I really wanted to be at the funeral, but I didn't regret it. She was in a really poor shape.

I don't remember much after that. The first few weeks I remember spending a lot of time at my aunt's house, thinking they could all use some company and support, but after that I guess life just went on as usual. My family moved to Athens the next year. Later on both of my cousins got married, Petros has 3 kids now, and he took over my uncle's store and opened his own right next to it. Kaki still lives in the house and sleeps with her husband in the same, but newly furnished, room that her father died. My aunt still wears black and lives in a little guesthouse they built for her right behind the main house. In the exact spot where my uncle used to have his tool shed. The one that Petros burned down trying to figure out how to light matches, but that's a whole different story.

Life does go on. Even after death. Only I didn't get to keep the puppy.