Catharsis (Or, Buyer's Remorse, in Advance)

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Over supper, Demetrios told me stories of his days in Ormskirk. There were nurses who tried to bully young doctors. There was Marjorie, whose office he shared. In the course of an argument with him, she said, “This is my office, and I can throw you out, you know.”

Demetrios just looked at her and said, “Try.”

There was the time a patient came in with an injury he said was from pole vaulting, and Demetrios had no idea what a pole was, or what jumping with one meant. So Sister Cavanaugh tried to explain, and when she couldn’t make him understand, she showed him. She grabbed a pole used to open and close the shutters (too high to be reached) and jumped right over the operating table!

There was Dr. Burgess (of whom I’ve heard, in reverent tones, for years and years) who, speaking slowly and distinctly, once asked Demetrios, “And how did you learn your perfect English? Do_you_follow?”

“But because of the guest worker laws in England,” Demetrios told me, “I couldn’t stay in Ormskirk more than six months. So I asked Dr. Sanderson for some advice. He said, ‘Well, Demetrios, bring me a list of the job openings and we’ll look it over and see what will be best for you.’ So I did, and he told me the job in Walton would be the best. So I went there for six months, then back to Ormskirk for another six, and then I had to leave. And it really broke my heart.”

He had fled Greece, to escape his family, who he perceived as hating him and not wanting him. So when he came to Ormskirk, he made the hospital his new home, and its staff his new family. And then he had to leave them.

“Why did your mother and brother treat you so badly?” I asked.

“Well, with my brother, it’s easier to explain. It was jealousy.”

“But why? He was always your mother’s favorite, the one she doted on because he was always sickly, the one who unfailingly got his way…”

“But I was the one people always praised.” Yup, rightly or wrongly, he was perceived as the good one, the smart one, the one with the beautiful voice, etc. And of course he was the healthy one, too. Okay, so Christos was jealous.

And that explained the mother, too. Christos always had his way. If he was jealous, then for his sake his mother also would mistreat Demetrios. It wasn’t the other way around, wasn’t Christos following her inexplicable example, as I had supposed.

“But you’ve been able to repair all that,” I said, after several long moments.

“Most of it, yes.”

“You were very, very good to your mother, above and beyond the call of duty. You are on good terms with Christos."

"Yes."

"And you do realize you can never get back the life you once had in Ormskirk…”

“I know. Most of the people won’t still be here. And the ones who are will have changed, and I have changed, and the whole culture has changed...”

So now the question arises: do we really want a flat in Ormskirk? And if so, why? Nostalgia is an insufficient reason for so big a decision.

Demetrios said, “I’ve even been wondering why not Italy or Spain?”

“Because Greece has pretty much all the advantages they have, plus Orthodoxy. And we don't speak Spanish or Italian, or know anybody in those countries.”

“I mean, we can go lots of places.”

“We could go to Tahiti!”

“What for?” he wondered, he being no fan of the tropics.

“Well, let’s see. Why is it I’ve always dreamed of going away somewhere and living with the natives in a grass hut? I think it’s the dream of escaping oppressive authority, of doing what you want when you want, of no paperwork, no bills, no responsibility…”

“And no telephone and no Internet.”

A cruel realization dawned upon me, shattering all those secret dreams of a lifetime: there’s no escaping authority. Or responsibility, either. Go to Fiji, go to the jungle, depart from civilization and go anywhere you like, you’ll still have responsibilities and you'll still be subject to authority. Even a primitive tribe has a headman, a chief, and he's going to be quite ignorant. You can only hope he may be kind and wise. “Because,” I said, “his word is law, and if he should suddenly decide you ought to be the main ingredient in tomorrow’s soup, well, then you’re in the soup. Period.” There’s no getting away from it; in this imperfect world, you are always going to be subject to someone else unless you subjugate them first. Go to some tiny, insignificant nation (Pulau, for example), and you will find it being bullied and/or manipulated by the larger, more powerful nations. There’s some point, after all, in what we have thought of as a chauvinistic song:

Rule, Brittania,
Brittania, rule the waves!
Britons never, never, never
shall be slaves!

Live and let live is an ideal that probably doesn’t exist anywhere. And trying to escape responsibility is as much a chimera as trying to recapture ones youth. In fact, that's exactly what it is! Vacations are for temporarily ducking responsibility; real life includes it.

In the middle of an island,
In the middle of the ocean,
You and I forever, darlin',
In a paradise for two!

That’s a song from my childhood that captured my imagination, but it makes less sense, actually, than “Rule, Brittania!” Life isn’t about two in isolation from the whole world. It’s about connectedness to everybody. And yes, it's about responsibility for everybody.

So the prospect of buying this flat has forced us both, today, to give up some cherished illusions and face some hard realities. And the question remains: why Ormskirk? Why any place instead of another? Do we really want to live HERE, of all other places in the world? And if so, why?

“Do you think it will heal some of the grief you’ve had in your heart all these years on account of having had to leave?” I asked.

He said he thought it would. Even knowing he could live here again helps.

“Well, then, that’s reason enough,” I said. “Just so you don’t forget that life here will not be a reprise of the life you had before.”

“No, of course I understand it will have to be a new life, maybe with some fragmentary elements of the old, but a different life.”

So the next question is, can we make a new, pleasant life here? (Sure, we can!)

The more immediate question is whether to cancel tomorrow’s appointments. We decided not to. Who knows? If we found this jewel so quickly, there just may be others waiting to surprise us. Even if not, viewing the other offerings will be good for purposes of comparison. Besides, we need a day or two to think, and how else should we spend those days?