When you realze your family is fragile

I was visiting my parents with my family in Indianapolis a couple of weeks ago for Easter. Us Greeks celebrate the "Greek Orthodox" Easter which tends to follow Passover, because really you can not have Easter without Passover, but that is a different entry.

Anyway, we drove down there and realized, wow, 10 hours of flat, boring land is a major drag!

The meet up with the family had a two reasons:

1) Greek Easter
2) My daddy was diagnosed with Lymphoma. Good news it is not Hodgkin's, it is isolated in his lymph nodes in his neck and it is stage one!

The second reason made me, and my siblings, learn some new things and see our dad in a different light.

So diagnosis is stage one, with four rounds of Chemo. No fun what-so-ever. My dad has never been so sick that he has had to be hospitalized or even go to the doctor that much. So this is huge, in the past two years he has had three or four surgeries to remove the "walnuts" as dad called them. They kept being benign until a month ago, that is when they turned bad. So now we are all gathering around and helping each other, really mom, through this time. It is hard when we are scattered around the USA. Thank God we are at least in the same country.

In one of my earlier entries, I wrote about my parents and where they are from. Daddy was born in Palestine. At 18 years of age he and his family had to leave their homes, their things, friends, pets, chickens, etc, behind and hide out in his grandmothers house in a different part of Palestine. They lived in the heart of Jerusalem where the war was taking place in 1948. His family lost three homes and all of their belongings. That is about all we knew. Dad has had a real hard time forgetting and letting go. He gets angry when he thinks about it and just sad. A lot of people/friends/even family tell him "just get over it", "stop living in the past",etc.

I remember growing up we would ask to see pictures of our parents life, my mom had a lot to share and we were lucky enough to be around her family most of our life and were able to see so much from her life as a kid, teenager, etc. How she dressed, her homes, etc. However with dad we never did. It was not for lack of trying. Dad would always say there is nothing left, nothing, I have nothing to show you.

We were fortunate enough to visit a couple of times Israel, and visit where he grew up, where he want to school, but it was different.

Well this past visit was no different in the respect of dad bringing up his past and the family kind of saying "yes dad..." Except this time he did something that changed it for all of us I think. He brought out an album of his childhood. Turns out his Dad was really into photography, as is my dad. My grandfather was quite the photographer. So we spent a good long time looking at these pictures. Dad talked about each one like it was yesterday. Their home was beautiful, fresh, with a gorgeous garden, house made of stone, beautiful stone. His dog was adorable, found out he had a dog. It was so hard for him to discuss all of this, but it brought it home for me at least. One of his families tradition was that every First of May they would invite all of their friends, family, neighbors and eat strawberries and cream. This was quite a luxury in those days, People would come from all over for this event. They would then go for walks, hikes around Jerusalem pick flowers, make wreaths, etc.

Looking at those pictures helped put a lot in perspective. My father was 18 years old! He was not a kid, he was a man, he was looking at his life and loving it, and continuing his families traditions in their homes, etc. Except that did not happen, what happened was there homes were taken and they were asked, shoved, whatever to leave. Leave it all behind. How do you leave it all behind? Knowing there is nothing you can do, you can't fight, I mean you could but it was futile. My grandmother used to sneak in the middle of the war to her home in Jerusalem and take what ever she could carry, the clock that has been in the family since forever and was made in the 1600's (I think that was the time) the rugs, the pictures, the album, but most of it was lost.

My dad can not forget. His three best friends were able to. They also had to leave and they spread around the world, one in Greece, one in Seattle and the other in Australia. In the past 3-5 years my dad has visited them and asked them if they look back? They all said no. Once they left they never looked back. The anger just made them never look back. However my dad could not. It was too much. He understands that now, he knows that people are annoyed, all he wants is for people to acknowledge it, and stop telling him to just forget it. He wishes he could, he wishes he could be like his best friends and just forget. Maybe with this part of his life he will learn to slowly let go. He should be happy, he has led a good life, he provided so well for all of us. I hope that with this part of his life he learns to let go and have a light heart. He does not need to forget the past, he just needs to hold on to the good memories and look at all that he has created.

The funny thing is that my father is not the only one to feel that way. One would think that the younger generation would not care because they did not live through that, they did not experience anything like that. Except that I have friends my age, younger even who feel just like my dad. Their families, like mine, also lost everything. Everyone has a story. They are sad stories.

Yeah war is hell. It is beyond hell. So it always amazes me when there is one more war we fight. I guess we will never learn, ever.

So at the end of the day, we are all fragile. We think we are strong, we think we can handle it all but we can't and that is okay. The next three months will be an interesting time. I think there is more that we will learn about my dad. I look forward to going back to hang out with him after his treatments and look at the album again.

I think about how I feel, has his feeling of never forgetting, the anger, live in me? I don't think so, but I get to feel bad for my dad and all that he lost. However it is also up to me to help him look at the present and the future, mostly the present.