2023-07-01 09:00:12
Even dead, your teeth are perfect.
I am next to your open grave almost six years following you left me. The undertaker is in front of me, waiting. I accuse him of deliberately removing your bones without waiting for me to be here, because I see nothing but dirt in the pit.
Eftyhios answers me: “No, it’s here, look.”
In Greek, Eftyhios means joy, happiness. The gravedigger has been working in this Athens cemetery for more than 20 years, he knows decomposed bones. I give her the bottle of red wine, the bleach, the powdered soap, and the white sheet that they asked me to buy. I cried in the supermarket with such a shopping list. The last one for you.
I stare into the grave like a weary archaeologist, almost unaware of what is right in front of me: bones sunk into the ground, bits of lace torn from inside the coffin lid, long bones where your arms used to be, those arms that once embraced me. Then I see more: a jaw, ribs, thigh bones. Your strong thighs wrapped me so well.
From that jaw once sprouted words, kisses and goodbyes in airports and docks, comforting murmurs while we slept. For 30 years I heard you speak, but now I can’t remember your voice as I stand paralyzed by your grave.
When we bury our loved ones in Greece, tradition requires exhuming the bones following three years due to lack of space; it is rare to get a two or three year extension. I used every possible excuse to delay it. I told the authorities that there were relatives who might not travel from New York to accompany me on my first time experiencing this upsetting occasion, and that my elderly parents might not be left alone on Andros and needed me to take care of them. It was all true. And they worked for a while. I paid high fees to keep you where you were.
But the pandemic created an urgent need for graves. The cemetery was running out of space. And I might no longer put off releasing that space to someone else.
I received a threatening call from a municipal official who told me: “If you do not come to Athens to take care of your husband’s bones, we will open the grave without you and put the bones in a box.”
Stuck on the island of Andros with my parents in full lockdown, I told him: “I am a journalist. If you touch a single pebble from his grave, I will write regarding you.
Shortly following, a kind soul from the town hall called and apologized. He told me not to worry regarding digging up your bones just yet. When the travel regulations changed, we would talk once more.
I thanked him and cried.
In Andros, I forced myself to walk, to discover towns, paths that I had never explored. I even tested myself by becoming a winter swimmer. Each empty beach had its own beauty and silence, and the shores waited for me to dive into their waters.
I spoke to you many times out loud while swimming or sitting shivering alone, punishing my body because it continued to live. Nothing might take away the pain of loss, not even the icy waters that burned my skin.
In my unpublished novel, I wrote a scene regarding the savano, the white cloth in which we wrap our dead following washing their bones and bathing them in wine. When I wrote the scene in the novel, I imagined a scene from some biblical movie that was shown during Easter, when Mary Magdalene went to the tomb to anoint her corpse. Little did I imagine that I would star in a similar ritual in my life.
Eftyhios opens your savannah and deposits it next to your open grave. He asks me: “Do you want to see his skull?”
“Sure,” I say, like someone has asked me if I’d like a glass of water.
Eftyhios leaps into the pit on what would have been your chest and stoops to pick up your skull, a dirty ceremonial bowl lifted into the air at me. Bones mixed with earth cover the back, which is smooth and whole, unlike the broken front, proof of how violent your fall down the stairs of our house was that night while I was sleeping.
I stare at him and imagine someone serving me a bowl of boiled wild greens, smothered in glistening olive oil and lemon. I nod, unable to comprehend that it’s you I’m looking at.
Pieces of you rise to the surface. Eftyhios removes the kneecaps, the arm bones, the thigh bones, the rib cage. He is little of you, but he is all inside me, and most of you is on the white sheet.
He tells me that the eye socket, jaw, and chin, which were broken in the fall, will be carefully collected, washed, disinfected, and prepared to be placed in the metal box I bought at the cemetery office so I can take you. to your final resting place
I can’t see the coffin lid or any part of the shiny wooden coffin. Everything has disintegrated, as has my future.
As Eftyhios carefully unearths each remaining bone, I ask if I can speak to him in private, so I turn away from my calm brother-in-law, godson, and sister-in-law, who are watching the process, perhaps as stunned as I am.
I whisper to this big, muscular, tattooed man, “I’m going to Andros tonight, and if I can’t have it all right now, I need to take some part of it with me.”
“I’ll take care of it,” he says, taking my little red bag from me. She goes to the grave and comes back with something inside. “I’ve put a little bone here for you,” she says. “The finger is the strongest bone. Be sure to soak it in wine and let it dry.”
I thank him with a tearful voice. Macabre? Maybe, but I need some of you with me, and this will have to do.
The person from the town hall assured me that I might take the box with me today. I was planning to take the night ferry back to Andros with you by my side. But it seems that the information was not correct. I have to wait a few weeks for the health department to give it its all clear before I can take your bones anywhere. The trip back to my safe space will have to be done alone, without all your bones.
On the ferry to Andros, I don’t reserve a seat for you because you’re hiding in my bag, keeping me company. We see the moon rise over the mountains of Attica as we move away from the harbor and see the reflected golden road stretching out to sustain us on this last journey.
As we disembark on the island, I make the long walk home and catch a glimpse of the whitewashed steps leading up to the village church where we celebrated our simple, traditional wedding 30 years ago. We celebrated our union in the same church where my grandmother Amalia got married and where my mother was baptized. I miss you a lot. The pain does not fade; it stays by my side while I drive, while I create my art, even while I laugh. I laugh once more, you know.
As I turn the last curve of the road that leads to the village of Apikia, I see the elegant Tourlitis lighthouse in the sea and I count the moments that pass between the flashes of light. Any sailor can figure out where it is from those beams.
That lighthouse is now my guide. I turn to him when I’m down or even hopeful in winter and fall, in summer when the house is full of friends and family. I can’t have you in this life, in this home you built for us. I can’t have your bones either, but I have you in our son, in my memories of us as a couple in love.
When I finally get home, the first thing I do is open a good bottle of red wine, one that you and I would like. I pour a glass for myself and pour a little over your finger bone into your wine glass. I let the wine soak your bone. And I raise my glass.
Here’s to you, my Rouli. For the luck that I have had to love you, to live with you. You were so unique, so kind, so calm in the rough flow of life. Here’s to accepting that, physically at least, you’re gone. Here’s to the hope of feeling once more. For the hope of being able to live once more. Health.
Amalia Melis, a New Yorker living in Greece, recently wrote a novel inspired by her family’s immigration experiences.
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