During the last years of his life, grandfather contracted the disease of old age, quite often attributed to a helplessness towards more creative goals and the omnipresent innate fear of death. Although frugality and even avarice as a remedy for this fear appears as a contradiction of terms, the hoarding of money in savings from a meagre pension, especially from those who managed to escape the net of deep poverty, can be seen as a denial, as an illusion rather that the end is still far away: we need not concern ourselves and occupy our minds with this End, as much as the everyday trivialities of life which goes on as usual. I have observed a similar attitude in Father, and a growing one in myself and others aging around and along with me. For a reason and a purpose that I still find largely inexplicable and is probably non-existent, as man ages, as the candle of life burns low, material insecurity grows. Along with it, the concern to protect and increase the wealth he has accumulated flares up within him, the impulse and will to stash more money is reinforced. At the same time, he is fully aware that nothing is taken along with in what he believes follows death and whatever he once owned and left behind will be dissipated by future generations. Its creator will have no say on all this and he will not be witness to what will have become of his name, possessions and legacy.
The last conversation
with grandfather took place in the courtyard of the family house in the village,
at the unforgettable Easter family feast of 1986; unforgettable partly because
of the Chernobyl disaster, but mainly because it was one of the last family
gatherings where representatives of three generations converged in the village
home. Grandfather and I sat next to each other at the corner of the empty
table, under the shade of the lilac at the edge of the paved courtyard. The lamb
which uncle Alekos was spit-roasting since dawn was consumed, Father and uncle
Alekos retired to the small bedrooms for the inevitable afternoon siesta, and the
women gathered in the shade of the kitchen for coffee and an endless chat. They
were joined by grandmother Eudoxia, on one of her last outings from her city
flat, half lost into herself, having already gone past the first stages of
senile dementia. Grandfather, with a glass of retsina in his hand, with
cheerful eyes shining from the table wine, but with the clarity of thought and
speech intact, said to me: "L, I would like you to know that I have set
aside some ten million drachmas for my daughters and grandchildren. But I feel
I there are many years left in me, a lot of bread still to eat and wine to
drink. I have a long way to go..." And by saying that, he winked at me.
What he implied that afternoon, a couple of months before my departure overseas
and a farewell that proved final, I realised many years later. Until then, from
grandfather Yiannis, whom either out of an intimate respect, which his family
environment and the village community and the stories about him cultivated in
me, or because of my inherent shyness, or because of a chronic physical and
emotional distance I never called "grandpa" (as I believe he would have been pleased to
hear), nor did I ever ask the naive inquisitive questions that delight
grown-ups to hear, from that man I never asked any favours. Even for the petty
pocket money he handed to me, he had to be reminded and urged by his two resident
daughters. Nevertheless, I was for him, I was told, as the oldest and
"academically distinguished (in his eyes)" grandson the rightful heir
of most of his millions of drachmas.
He died in the couch
of the living room, where after retirement and in old age he read the
newspapers or listened to the radio, with his arms crossed over his chest,
staring at the ceiling under the yellow, melancholy light of a naked light
bulb. The old radio was still standing unused on a table tucked away in a
corner; a black-and-white TV was brought and placed on the heavy mahogany
bureau. In his last days, his diminutive body had shrunk to its bare bones, as
I was told by my aunts who cared for him along with a frequently visiting Mother.
I was abroad when the local doctor pronounced that a latent prostate cancer,
which had been left to grow untreated for years and decades, had metastasized
to the bones, and became incurable. None of us, not even ourselves, imagined
that the night creaking of the kitchen door to the toilet outside, in a corner
of the terrace, which woke us up along with the voices of drunkards from the
café of Grammenos in the mysterious nights of Magnesia of my childhood, portended
the painful and abrupt end that would come. Grandfather used to proudly proclaim
that he never visited or called a doctor in his whole life, but for some inexplicable fatigue and heaviness he felt in the legs, they were forced to call him. His health record book was indeed a tabula
rasa. And it remained as such: the first visit of a doctor in his lifetime
simply prognosed the inevitable end. The medications prescribed simply
alleviated his suffering from the unbearable pains of his bone cancer. His
terminal condition and the end, which was approaching with the mathematical
brutality that characterises death in human fate, was kept secret from him, so
much so that until the last weeks of his life he expected a recovery and a return
to his daily routine.
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