I do not exactly welcome hardship but sometimes it is necessary if we are to develop the skills and stamina needed to face the world and live a full life. A cushy life will breed an idle mind.
To quote from Frank Herbert's masterpiece, Dune: " 'There should be a science of discontent. People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscle' -from "The Collected Sayings of Muad'dib" by the Princess Irulan"
However, the blows of the year 2007 were particularly hard in a very nasty way. Anathema to the year 2007. Its memory shall live in infamy. Anathema sit, anathema, anathema.
I will not mention the disastrous fires of the summer which destroyed a good portion of our forestland, caused a deplorable number of casualties and left us so numb that we did not even have the good sense of coming out to the streets with tar, feather and a hefty length of rope for each member of the parliament (and each candidate of the September elections as well).
The worst of that year for my family came in springtime when we lost two people who were very close to us.
The first was an uncle,a cousin of my mother's, who worked with my father's business for more than 40 years. Besides humoristic squabbles about football, politics and regionalistic joking (my father is from the Peloponnese and my mother - and her relatives - are Cretan) they never exchanged (in all that time) an angry word. It was he who brought my mother there to work as a secretary and that is how she met my father.
He died of lower respiratory tract infection, caused by multi-resistant nosocomial bacteria, as a result of a two-month long hospitalisation because of a massive cerebral infarction.
The second was a distant cousin of my father's. He was a farmer, a rock of a man who could make a cow ( A COW ! ) kneel with his bare hands, with thunderous laughter and continuous good humour. His house was like the halls of the kings of Olde, always open, with food always on the table and beer and wine continuously flowing for any man that should chance to pass by.
For him I have these lines from a very old poem:
Hwǽr cwóm mearh, hwǽr cwóm mago? Hwér cwóm máððumgyfa?
Hwǽr cwóm symbla gesetu? Hwǽr sindon seledréamas?
Éalá, beorht bune! Éalá, byrnwiga!
Éalá, þéodnes þrym! Hú seo þrág gewát,
genáp under niht-helm, swá heo nó wǽre!
( Where is the horse gone, where the young rider? Where now the giver of gifts?
Where are the seats at the feasting gone? Where are the merry sounds in the hall?
Alas, the bright goblet! Alas, the knight and his hauberk!
Alas, the glory of the king! How that hour has departed,
dark under the shadow of night, as had it never been!
Lines from the Anglo-Saxon poem "The Wanderer", translated by Professor JRR Tolkien).
He died of lower respiratory tract infection caused by multi-resistant nosocomial fungi and bacteria, as a result of a three-weeks long hospitalisation because of worsening chronic obstructive pulmonary disease caused by non-small cell lung cancer.
The relatively long course of these two deaths, along with the prolonged suffering that comes with such cases served to illustrate to me the meaning of a much abused and misused word.
Love.
You were not there. You may have seen similar cases. But you were not there (except for you Dennis - the family holds great gratitude) to witness with your own eyes.
Not for one minute were they alone. And not just make-believe concern. Their neighborhoods were silent for weeks before they died.
But what you should have seen were their wives. It was not despair. It was not histrionics.
It was the WILL to fight. To help them live. I tell you, if Death had to come to get them in a physical form, black robes, sceletal fingers, scythe and all, he would get a right-royal kick up his buttside. This is not Sweden where one might think to settle these matters in a game of chess.
You should have heard their words. Spoken because they knew they would never get another chance to tell them how they feel. They were the only times in my life that I cmae close to witness an Ideal. No speeches, no paeans, no flags, no ceremonies have ever come close to that.
Still, their lives together were ending. But, the certainty of that was not a cause of despair for them. If anything, it was an embarassment to the great entity that is supposed to watch over our lives and rule wisely, in an omniscient and omnipotent way...
I have seen Love transcend the concepts of Death and of Universe. And that, in the face of two aged, uneducated and bewildered women.
What a mighty lesson that was.
PS.
Today is the birthday of Professor JRR Tolkien. If he were alive, today he would be 116 years old. Details about him and his works are widely known.
I will only say that his undying legacy comes from his unwillingness to compromise in anything that had to do with his views on language, art and morality. He faced everything with the stature of someone who holds the moral high ground and has genuine love for what he does.In this manner, he created the last true epic of our civilization and helped turn our scholarly eyes to an age which we thought barbarous and obscure simply because the Glory of the Roman Legions had faded.
And speaking of love, Tolkien was buried with his wife. The stone reads:
Edith Mary Tolkien
Lúthien
1889 – 1971
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
Beren
1892 – 1973
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