Dimitris

September 17.
...
PS: I should go back to the lodging now. But I plan to head to the arena. And this is a move that doesn’t suit me at all. Dimitris Makris… Forbidden boy… What have you done to my judgment?
I took the bike a few kilometers to a beach, where I parked and got off, offering my hand to help Aris do the same. She removed her helmet and looked at the dark sea. I then explained:
“This place has the most beautiful sunrise in all of Thessaloniki.”
She smiled.
“Really? I don’t think I’ve ever seen the sunrise from such a beautiful place.”
“It should happen in less than an hour.”
I stepped down from the sidewalk to the sand, walked a few steps, and sat on the ground. Aris followed, sitting next to me. The streetlights provided some illumination to the beach, but the place was completely deserted at that hour.
“Why did you bring me here?” she asked after a few moments of silence.
“You can’t come to Thessaloniki and never see the sunrise here. Consider it a gift.”
“A gift? It’s not Christmas, and my birthday is still four months away.”
“It’s an advance, then. Again, for what you did for my sister.”
“I didn’t do anything special.”
She really didn’t understand. How could she?
“My mother is alive, but it’s as if she’s not,” I said, my eyes fixed on the sea. “And I know it sounds cruel, but she’s now just a lifeless shell.”
“What happened?”
It wasn’t something I usually told anyone. But at that moment, for some reason, I felt a tremendous need to talk about it.
“I was ten, and my brother was eight. My mother was pregnant with Iris, and… we were happy. I don’t know if I was aware of it at the time, but now I know I felt a happiness I’ve never been able to feel again. And it was supposed to be just another day like any other. My father left work to pick us up from school. Thales, my brother, was never allowed in the front seat because he was still too young, and I had earned that right not long before. But that day, he insisted so much that I gave in, and my father did too.”
“I didn’t know you had a brother.”
“I did.”
“Oh, Dimitris. …You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to…”
But I did want to. And that’s why I continued:
“A truck ran a red light in the other lane, and my father didn’t even have time to brake. Our car collided head-on. I was the only one who survived.”
“I’m so sorry, Dimitris. I really am.”

“I spent a few weeks in the hospital and couldn’t even attend the funeral. Neither could my mother. She literally had a breakdown and had to be hospitalized until the doctors could perform a cesarean section. My mother hardly ate, hardly spoke… For almost a year, she became practically a vegetable. An uncle of mine from Athens had to come here and take care of everything during that time.”
“And how is your mother now? She’s no longer…”
“No, she’s not like that anymore. At some point, she reacted, but she never became herself again. She entered a sort of automatic mode where she could take care of herself and work. That’s all she does. She wakes up, takes a shower, eats… and goes to our home office to work. She stays there late, usually only eating when a housekeeper brings her something. She hired a nanny to take care of me and Iris, a driver to take us where we need to go, a housekeeper to manage the house, and… I don’t think she’s even had a medical check-up since, because she refuses to leave the house.”
“And you?”
“What about me?”
“You told how your mother was after the pain of losing your father and brother. But how were you after losing your father and brother?”
I turned my face toward her, finding her brown eyes gazing at me with concern.
I always thought that if I ever managed to tell someone, I’d receive a look of pity. But that wasn’t how Aris looked at me. There was almost an understanding there.
The understanding that only someone who has had their life shattered could have.
“I’m like you see now. I wanted to be strong to take care of Iris as she deserves, but I’m not.”
“You do everything you can. And believe me, in some way, your mother does too. Every human being has a limit of pain they can endure. And a limit to how much they can survive after suffering such a loss.”
“My limit isn’t enough. My mother’s is even less. She lost a child, but there were two left who needed her at that moment. Iris still needs her.”
She didn’t respond and just looked ahead again. I did the same, and for a while, the only sound we heard was the waves breaking and crashing on the sand, coming within a few meters of our feet.
Then I said:

“Are you afraid of death? Afraid that each day might be your last?”
“And you’ve completely lost that fear and just live as if each day truly were your last,” she responded, perfectly describing how I felt.
“Because I learned, while still very young, that this is the truth. My father had no health problems. Nor did my brother. He sometimes lied about being sick to get our mother to let him skip school on test days. But he rarely even got a cold. Also, my father was the most prudent man in the world. I never saw him drink a single drop of alcohol; he said he didn’t like the taste. He didn’t smoke, exercised regularly, and was the most responsible driver. He was within the speed limit that day. Until some asshole ran a red light at high speed and ended the life of a man and a child. Somehow, he also ended my mother’s life and mine.”
I felt her warm hand on mine and turned my face toward her, seeing her look at me. The faint light from the streetlights allowed me to see her tearful eyes.
“You and your mother still have each other. And you have Iris.”
“I’ve already said that my mother just doesn’t care, Aris. If I had also died that day, it wouldn’t have made a difference to her.”
“I know it’s not the same, but… being an expatriate is also a kind of mourning. It’s a very different kind of mourning from yours, just as mine is different with my biological parents. All I have of them are basic details and a photo of each, thanks to my adoptive parents who managed to get me copies of their identification documents. There are two 3x4 photos, both serious. I don’t know what their smiles were like. I don’t know anything about their life stories, the dreams they had, how they met and fell in love, or how they felt when they found out they were going to have a baby. They probably didn’t feel joy. They were surely terrified given the situation they were in, amidst a war.”
I nodded in understanding.