Hokee hankisd.

Today would have been her 88th birthday.

I was eleven when she left us.  In a small, private corner of my heart, every day feels like the day she died. 

I will never forget coming home from school that day.  It was a Tuesday.  There was an eclipse -- we spent part of class outside.  I walked home with my best friend, Richie; we stopped, as was our daily ritual, at the top of the hill near the corner of 11th and 16th Street, to stuff our backpacks with buckeyes.  I can't remember what we would do with them, but I remember peeling away the soft, green exterior to uncover the smooth, polished surface beneath. 

I burst through the screen door that day -- "Hellooooooo" -- waving the index card my teacher had poked a hole in so we could watch the moon swallow the afternoon sky.

Looking back, I think even the sun lowered its gaze for the passing of Zabelle Khachatourian.

The moment I came through the door -- when I saw Mom's face, she looked so tired, worn thin -- I knew what had happened. 

Six months of lingering in the hospital had come to an end. 

We had made countless trips since her visit to the hospital became permanent.  I remember so many of those drives down Highway 30, with Gypsy Kings playing in the car; the layout of the lobby, where the cafeteria was, an echo of the laughing faces behind the counter who gave me extra helpings of mashed potatoes; the slow stutter of the elevator, the way my stomach would tighten as the doors parted on the fifth floor, the code to the nurse's room (3-5-1); wheeling the old, bent man down the hall -- was he Charlie? -- in his chair while an I.V. dripped steady sustenance; reciting words I did not understand as we played the finger game, watching episode after episode of Wings, sitting by her bed, her thinning legs covered by that white, cold, horrible blanket.

Sometimes I dream about her -- flashes of her face, her shawl, a hint of paklava, or dolma, or horma sabzi hanging in the air.  She permeates my thoughts. 

I remember more than those last weeks in the hospital.  I remember how safe it felt, wrapped up in her arms on the couch in my aunt's living room, gazing at the Christmas Tree.  I remember the smell of summer in Iowa mingled with steamed rice.  I remember bridging a language gap in ways only a grandmother and her grandson could understand.  I remember long drives to Dallas in the back of  my parents' car, sitting between metsmama and metspapa, every so often switching the shoulder I would sleep on, reasoning with all the gravity of a seven-year-old that, this way, they wouldn't think I loved one less than the other. 

The last time my mother had gone to see her, my metsmama made her promise she wouldn't be sent back to Iran -- that her body would be laid to rest in American soil. 

She knew.

Hokee hankisd -- rest for the soul.  For hers, and ours.

It was years before I could begin to understand the magnitude of the impact she had on my life.  In so many ways, I still struggle to comprehend it.  But for her, and for my two amazing nieces in whose eyes her soul reflects, I offered this:

In the Stilled and Silent Places

Djamangeen gar oo chagar, at a time there was — and there wasn’t. Cracked lips parched frame a language told to die: Yes molorvel em, I am lost —       we are lost. Barikalla, they cheer a lifetime away — where head somersaults over heels, and laughter echoes from a well       long wet with sorrow. And behind, the cry of the duduk, stately, slow, holding firm to march where others fell into the waste. Der Voghormya, Der Voghormya — Lord have mercy.

Kitchen Armenian in the air, Ah-no-tees? — mehk rope — threaded with scents of pilaf on the stove, the tang of sumac far removed from copper veins. To look at her is to look into the heart of a people, bones of the earth —       murder courting memory       in the streets of Diarbekir. Eem hokeen seroom e ko hokeen, my soul loves your soul — and knotted hands map graceful that pale face,       skin never touched       by the sun over Der El Zor. She has metsmama’s eyes like spun Armenian glass; eyes never to see the slivered moon weep crimson      above the long sand. We are reminded of those things we cannot remember. Der Voghormya, Der Voghormya — Lord have mercy.

Comments

[mom]

Thank you for helping me realize we need to celebrate the incredible soul she was and the many "gifts" her life offered all of us...
Her soul is smiling...she's so very proud of you...
Love you every day!

[kate]

She was an amazing woman! I can still hear here calling for you to come home. She would be so proud of you today!