Savannah Morning News
May 9 2010
>From the very beginning, you loved me
A Mother’s Day meditation on growing up and saying goodbye
Posted: May 9, 2010 – 12:18am
By Arek Sarkissian II
My last phone conversation with my grandmother was one of many in
which I wish I had said more.
"Inch peces?" I said to her over the phone, which means "How are you?"
in Armenian.
Over the years, Grandma trained herself to hang up the phone if she
didn’t know a voice. Uttering a bit of her native language quickly
made her realize it was me. She said she missed me and that my father
was in the shower.
"I love you, Grandma," I told her before she abruptly disconnected. A
thought of fumbling for a chance to confirm my statement popped up,
but I was pretty sure she heard.
I think.
Grandma died two days later, April 28, at University Medical Center in
Tucson, Ariz. She was 95 years old. Her funeral took place Wednesday.
On a chilly Tucson morning on April 26, Grandma hobbled down some
pebble and cement steps in the backyard of my father’s home to a line
of potted roses in full bloom. Later that day she told my father, her
son, she wanted to pick some.
"I warned her, ‘Don’t you ever, ever go down there alone – you’re
going to kill yourself,’" my father recalled.
"I told her, ‘If you want to go, we’ll go together, but don’t you ever
do that again.’"
The next day – April 27 – Grandma made the same trip, cut some of the
crimson flowers and headed back toward the kitchen. She stumbled on
the top steps and smashed the back of her head against the ground.
Blood quickly filled her skull and never stopped.
"I found her mumbling and going in and out of consciousness, so I
called EMS," my dad said.
Grandma died at 2:30 p.m. the next day – about 20 minutes after the
ventilator stopped forcing life into her frail, 84-pound body.
"Yes, I watched it happen," my dad told me. "You could see her skin turn color.
"Life slipped from her body."
Loss and gain
I was 2 when my mother died after slamming her brand new, fire-engine
red 1982 Cadillac Eldorado into a mature elm tree in suburban Detroit.
Two years later, my grandmother arrived in Detroit to live with my
father and his five children, 4 to 14 years old.
I was the youngest.
"Arek, I come from the plane and we go home, you sit in my lap and
say, ‘Grandma, I love you,’" Grandma frequently recalled. "From the
very beginning, you love me."
>From that point on, instead of a mom, we had Grandma. She made Persian
and Armenian-style meals, did laundry and threw a shoe with dead-on
accuracy at the first sign of insubordination.
"A child needs consistency, and Grandma brought the five of you that,"
my father told me the day before her funeral. "You need a routine so
there are no surprises – you can’t go from one place to another all of
the time."
Despite a few bumps and bruises along the way, I grew up, went to
college and graduated. One of my siblings owns a law firm and two
others have master’s degrees. Another is a marketing executive for a
major online media company.
News of Grandma’s death was beyond devastating for all of us.
"It’s just horrible that she went that way," my sister wrote in an
e-mail on the night of her death.
Who cares if she wasn’t picking us up from school, making cookies for
the team or attending PTA meetings?
Grandma was our pillar, our rock.
She was our mother.
Saying goodbye
Grandma’s death was imminent, even if she didn’t fall, my dad explained.
In February, doctors found three malignant lesions in her chest. Her
aged body couldn’t withstand any modern procedure to rid her lungs of
the growths. Poison from the cancer seeped into her blood and made her
sleep more than usual. She’d probably die that way, my father said.
By the time she was deemed clinically doomed from massive head trauma,
cancer had diminished her blood quality to the point of near death.
"She would have died in the next month," he said. "The cancer was
doing its job."
Besides, my dad added, if Grandma wouldn’t listen to him about taking
the stairs, imagine the poor soul from Hospice trying to help.
Preparing for the funeral felt like I was readying for a court
sentence hearing. No matter what, the outcome would be both depressing
and excruciating. I was the first to see her body in the coffin and
cried through visitation and an abbreviated Armenian Orthodox service.
Most of my family kissed Grandma’s cold, waxy forehead. I only stared
at her and wept.
My brother placed the flowers Grandma cut into her hands as his wife
rushed to comfort me.
"Arek, look at it this way," she said. "You got to see her in January,
and then we all visited her after that.
"She was ready to go."
But wait, I had one better. The phone call I made the day before she
made that walk to pick flowers was successful after all.
I got to say I love her one more time.
Rest in peace, Grandma.
Public Safety reporter Arek Sarkissian II has spoken often of his bond
with his grandmother, Genia Sarkissian, with his colleagues at the
Savannah Morning News and readers of his blog at savannahnow.com.
Last week, Arek lost the woman who became the heart of his family when
his mother died while he was a 2-year-old. On this Mother’s Day, we
thought it appropriate he share his family’s story with all of you.
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