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Eleni Gage

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In Gratitude for Funerals

October 18, 2012 by Eleni |

Of all the liminal stages and rituals that exist, everyone’s least favorite is, of course, the funeral. In a life filled with baptisms, weddings, and birthday parties, the funeral is the Eeyore of rituals: solemn, sorrowful, and downright depressing. But, like Eeyore, they serve a purpose that’s as important as those fulfilled by their other more cheerful, more colorful colleagues.

A week ago today we buried my aunt, Thitsa Lilia, on an improbably gorgeous fall day. To paraphrase P.D. James, “It was one of those perfect New England autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life.” My godmother later said to me that the weather was “as bright and beautiful as your aunt’s heart.”

The loss of my aunt is so profound that I prefer not to think about its impact on our family. In my travel memoir, North of Ithaka, I described the thitsas, my aunts, as having “carefully maintained bouffants that were as high as their self-esteem,” and wrote, “most people use the term Greek chorus figuratively. Well, I have the real thing, live and in person, a supporting cast made up of my four aunts…None of them is over five feet tall—in fact, they resemble Flora, Fauna, and Merriweather, the fairy godmothers in Sleeping Beauty, more than any chorus in a Greek tragedy. But they fulfill the same function: commenting on any action taking place in my life, interpreting oracles, explaining the past, and making predictions for the future.”

Some combination of the thitsas could often be found at the kitchen table in my parents’ house, and it usually included Thitsa Lilia. It was there that she taught Amalía, then six months old, to bang on the table with glee, an action she still performs daily, if not hourly. Without Thitsa Lilia around it, it seems as if the kitchen table should not exist anymore either.

But her funeral last week, while incredibly sad, was also, shockingly, fun at times. My mother likes to quote the Italian saying, “there’s no wedding without tears and no funeral without laughter,” and that was true last week, especially when Amalía amused everyone by toddling around the church hall during the reception luncheon after, strewing oyster crackers in her wake. The funeral was packed (Thitsa Lilia would have loved it), so I got to see relatives I usually only meet with at Christmas, if that. My cousins, Thitsa Lilia’s sons, had created bulletin boards covered in photos of her life, so I got to relive moments that I hadn’t even been around for the first time around–Thitsa Lilia’s trips to Greece, the Thanksgiving dinner she cooked as  young mom, her wedding day. I especially liked how they included everyday snapshots–including her sleeping on the couch in our house one summer afternoon–along with red-letter days.

I learned some folklore surrounding funerals, too–that some Greek women don’t wear makeup to funerals, because it’s a sad occasion. (I know how Thitsa Lilia appreciated a put-together lady, so I had my hair colored for the occasion and broke the makeup rule as well.) And I remembered what my father always says when he comes home from a wake or a funeral, that you have to stop somewhere on the way home, even if it’s just to buy a candy bar, so that death doesn’t follow you home.

Last week made me realized that funerals exist so that the bereaved can gather together to celebrate the life of the person who died, to take some comfort in each other, to be forced to confront their sorrow, and, perhaps most of all, to feel grateful for the time they had with the deceased, even if it wasn’t enough.

I gave a eulogy at Thitsa Lilia’s funeral, which I will reprint below. I enjoyed writing it because it forced me to think about what her life meant to me, as opposed to what her loss would mean. I am grateful Thitsa Lilia lived long enough to meet my husband and my daughter, and to dance at her baptism. And I hope that she is dancing with her husband, who died 19 years ago, right now.

Although she’d been battling her illness for years, Thitsa Lilia’s death came as a shock for us. As my sister, who lives in from California said, Every time I came home, she was always there. I think we all thought she would always be there.

But the truth is that Thitsa Lilia lived for 63 years longer than expected. When her siblings fled Greece to escape the Civil War and join their father here in Worcester, Thitsa Lilia stayed behind; the Communist army required each family to provide a soldier and she volunteered in order to spare her siblings. They made it to the US and didn’t hear anything about her for a year. And they were becoming certain that she had died in the fighting when they got word that she had been found alive and would be coming to join them.
Thitsa Lilia was never far from her family again. In the 63 years that followed she lived with her siblings and father, then next to her sister, Thitsa Kanta, with her husband Prokopi and her sons Foti and Spyro. Everyone else was in and out of that house, and, in recent years, her grandchildren Paul and Lilly often slept over.
Thitsa Lilia was  a celebrated chef and a beloved local businessperson running the Westboro House of Pizza with Theio Prokopi. And she was a mother, grandmother, aunt, sister, and friend whose love was all-encompassing. She was so warm, even her customers called her mom.
Some people are leaders of their community. Thitsa Lilia was the foundation of several communities. She was as involved with her childhood friends in Greece as she  was with her friends and family here. Nothing happened that she didn’t know about or weigh in on.
We all say we wish we were better at keeping in touch, but Thitsa Lilia was the person who actually did. Without the internet, without Facebook or email, she made sure the people she cared about felt her love. With the help of her superlong phone cord, she made her love cross oceans. She lived in continents of love. And she kept her love for her husband, Theio Prokopi, alive in the 19 years since he passed away.
Now they are together again. Her suffering has ended. But for those of us here, it is truly the end of an era. Although she lived for 63 years longer than expected, that wasn’t enough time for all of us who love her. But I know we will still feel her warmth. Thitsa Lilia’s ability to love was her superpower. And now her love will bridge another ocean,  the gap between the world of the living and the world of the dead. May her memory be eternal.

Filed Under: religion, Uncategorized Tagged With: funerals, Greece

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Eleni Gage

About Eleni

The daughter of a Greek father and a Minnesotan mother. I grew up in Athens, Greece, and the suburbs of Worcester, Massachusetts—
and became obsessed with cultural rituals and traditions along the way.

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