phoebus

Well, I'm back. If you don't feel like a long, sentimental (and at one point rather left-side-of-the-ball-park) journal, I'd skip this one if I were you.

Last week, Tuesday to be exact and 24 hours before I was ready to ship out, I found out that my Grandmother (from Greece), passed away.

I didn't show up to the States until 88, when I was 12 years old. Growing up, my folks (primarily my father) had their problems and so I often spent more than half my week with my Greek grandparents. While I love my parents very much, it was my grandparents who really gave my my early upbringing. In simple words, I attribute most things that are good about me to them. My Grandfather taught me how to think, while my Grandmother taught me how to feel.

My Grandfather passed away in '92, in a relatively good way: at home, with his wife and lifelong companion, awake and (as always) sound of mind enough to make his last farewells. All the same, his passing took a piece out of my heart because he was half my moral compass and I was only able to see him and my Grandmother but for a month or two a year.

Things quickly turned badly for my Grandmother. Her sons (my father and Godfather/uncle) fell to quarreling over a number of things. She picked up a nasty intestinal disease that made daily life hellish. Her sons, never equals to her husband in the mercantile/business world, promptly began driving the family business to lower and lower depths. And so things went for about 12 years and a couple of months.

The human will is an amazing thing. I truly believed my Grandmother's doctor when he would tell us that she was willing herself alive to see myself or my sister for one more month's worth of leave. And so, I guess I kind of took it for granted, after leaving Greece this summer, that the playful "contract" the two of us held (of seeing each other once more again) would be fulfilled once more.

I hadn't spent summer with my mother for some years now, and so I decided to wait until after my upcoming deployment to come back to Greece. I made my holiday calls, did my holiday shopping, and--a few days after speaking to my Grandmother--got the call from one of my cousins that she had passed on. No one wanted to call me to tell me she was in the hospital because they didn't want to scare me unnecessarily. This happened every 8-12 months, after all. I can't really blame them of course, but I literally did everything in my power to get to Greece within 24 hours (it costs a small fortune if you're interested in replicating the feat) for her funeral. It was a good ceremony, with a parade of people who came to pay respects to her as they did to my Grandfather. They were both loved and respected pillars of their community. I wonder if my father and uncle thought about anyone turning out for them in such numbers. The former probably wouldn't care; the second would probably blame the former for the lack of well-wishers.

Not 24 hours later, I (along with a pair of uncles, including thank God a great lawyer) had to play damage control while the issue of inheritance came up. I don't know if it speaks ill or well of them that they reached a general accord within a few hours.

Fast forward through 48 hours of drowning one's sorrows. This included the dubious experiment of popping open a bottle of good scotch that had lain in my Grandparents' living room for at least 22 years or so. I didn't even check to see when it was bottled. My companions for the night were a trio of revolution-era Greeks receiving a blessing from their priest-confessor (in a painting, of course).

And this brings us to the surreal part of the account. I'm walking to my father's place down Syntagma Square (basically where Congress/City Centre is). I was taking my dad, my sister, and my cousin to a football game (7th row, center field, premium seating). As I was crossing the road. I suddenly heard this crash, and as I looked ahead I saw this poor guy in a business suit trying to cover himself from this rain of small shards of glass. And then a fucking metal pole damn near chops his leg in half. When I say damn near, I don't mean it missed him. I mean he fell to the ground trying to keep his leg (attached by skin and strings of muscle) in one piece.

The first few seconds I don't even remember. I can't even tell you how I got to the point where I took control of his leg and kept it together, because that's all a big rush. There were two police officers standing right there, but they were paralyzed. I had to yell at them to get them to call an ambulance. For about half an hour we were waiting for an ambulance to get there.

Trying to keep the guy from going to shock. Talking to him, encouraging him, getting him to stay conscious and sane.

Trying to keep his leg together. Using my coat to bandage this... gaping wound (the words do it no justice). Trying to stay still while keeping his leg isolated while shivering in the cold.

Literally cursing at people to get this guy a coat to cover him up, to keep him from getting numb. The same for putting something under his back to shield him from the freezing road and running rain water.

Trying to get the cops to get everyone away as the winds picked up again, lest more of the same visit others. Trying to keep the guy calm about more shit falling on him. I promised him that if anything else fell I'd take the hit for him. I don't know that I would have, honestly.

At one point, he asked me if I was a doctor. I took that as a compliment. I said that I wasn't, but that in my line of work I'd seen worse, and that he was going to be fine. That was a lie. No bullet wound compared to what that poor man had inflicted on him. I promised him he'd keep his leg, that it looked far worse than it was. I have no idea if he did. The entire time I kept trying to figure out why he wasn't bleeding out on me. It kind of damned on me though that, miracle of miracles he somehow hadn't had his major arteries torn. 'Cause I was looking at them. Then, taking stock of the blood and meat we were lying on, I figured that he had lost whatever he was going to lose before I even got to him.

While I was taking care of this guy, I noticed someone my age staring at me like he knew me. I realized he was a childhood friend I hadn't talked to in over 10 years. We couldn't speak more than a few words of course. I never noticed him leave, but I can't blame him. He and his lady were dressed for dinner, and she looked positively sick.

When the ambulance came... that was the worst. They had to undo my makeshift bandages to re-apply their own. They had to set him on an immobilizer, which seemed to take 10 years off of his life.

I got to shake his hand one last time ("you'll be alright, buddy, I promise you"), and that was that.

I was in a dazed kind of shock for the rest of the day. I kept calling my cousin's old number and never realized it. I left my dad's place and went to the stadium to see the game, and nearly got arrested when the police there questioned the dried blood I still had on my hands and the odd matter on my coat.

When I went to my Godmother's place later that night, she told me I made the news, if just for a few seconds. I don't even know what to think about all that, still, expect along the lines of "You Win Some, You Lose Some". Maybe that was the balance. I don't know.