My Father’s Eyes
Albania has been very good to me all these months. But I can’t help wonder whether it has stalled my grieving process or intensified it. Time has been suspended. I am in a beautiful sunny country where I’ve needed to wear a coat only once; Where beauty is everywhere – in the women, the clothes, the human interactions, the true bonds, in family, nature, in the blue sea and the seashells – but so is death.
Yes. Death. Especially these last 2 years. But death is more visible here.
– ‘Hey what are you up to today?’ I ask a good friend of mine.
– ‘Oh, I am headed to a funeral,’ says he in a very normal but slightly sad tone. “Yea, a high school friend passed away.”
Or that other time he had to attend the services of a relative. Or the week after my father’s passing, one of his closest friends passed away, same day, same time, one week apart. And two months later, his gregarious, vivacious, life-loving beautiful first-cousin and best friend, died of Covid.
To an American-bred person this chain of events was (and continues to be) disturbing. Here, someone is sure to know someone who is about to die or will die. And that is because their roots (with all their fruit) are here. Their families, their extended families, their school friends, colleagues, neighbors. And attending someone’s funeral is a sacred ritual. In many ways – and I always say this to my Albanian friends – they are used to death. And we, the children of immigrants, whose entire clan didn’t come along with us to the States, have never experienced anything like this. Death as something so natural, to be expected? In the land of the Forever Young? Forever Beautiful? Perhaps the real loss of sense of time happens in the US and not here?! As I type this, I am sure of it.
But there is another reason, besides the sense of time, why I still refuse to believe what has happened has happened. How can I ? Each time I’ve traveled about my home country, I always went back home, back to the US that is and, back to dad. And that’s where he was, back home. And in a way it still feels the same. As if I am lounging about a beautiful place that I have chosen to temporarily call home and indulge myself, before I return to a post-Covid America, where mom and dad are. But dad isn’t there. Not this time. And only then do I enter into this vile vicious circle of forgetting and remembering. Of hazy ins and outs and into the tricks of the mind. And it hits me so quickly, so sharply, like stings to the head. Gone!
I then begin a little inner monologue: Anjez: Dad is here this time. And he is no more. Returning to the US will NOT change your feelings of sorrow; But neither will prolonging your stay here do any good for either of you. Especially not when every aged man you see has the same physical attributes as him. Especially his eyes! His beautiful, green, deep, knowing, wise, sensitive, soulful, bright and full of light, eyes.
The real reason! And I have an issue with this. It brings me both joy and pain. Joy to see faces resembling my father; pain to be continuously reminded that he is no longer here and that I can’t run into the Adriatic with him hand in hand, like we once did. You see, Albanians can be homogeneous. The common thing to say is to state with certainty that they are. But I have noticed different features from different regions, though with not much variation so on the whole yes, they all do look the same to me. And it is extremely painful to see men who look like your father, day in, day out. Those same deep piercing eyes, bright with life and love and passion, lustrous pools of deep emotion. And I crumble. I crumble on the floor and weep. Just then, moths and butterflies swirl around the hallway light.
And I begin to hear the voices of family and friends: ‘Don’t cry. It is believed that when you weep and mourn, the soul can not be at peace, for his mind is on you. And you must leave him in peace, not to worry about you. You must laugh, rejoice, dance, do all the beautiful things he knew you loved and could. Go to places that he loved. Do the things he loved. Live to honor him. Do, be, be joyful. Live!’
Sic itur ad astra!
