In Selfish Defiance (On Rituals)

The morning after my father's funeral was his cremation. Family members were invited to witness the event. Many of my family members went, perhaps to make real the loss that had been felt that week, or maybe have one final opportunity to say goodbye. I imagine they stood there, watching as the coffin entered the furnace, tears on their faces as they coped with the magnitude of the loss.

In selfish defiance, I could not bear to go myself. 

Not to long ago we found ourselves collected on boat heading to the center of Lake Sevan. On a plastic table toward the rear of the boat was a heavy wooden box within which were the ashes produced that September morning a year and a half before, soon to be unscrewed, removed, and spread across the cold, gentle water. 

Earlier that day, upon the insistence of some, a church service was held to remember my father. The church, near where he lived in Yerevan, was often used by him to remember others for whom he cared. Though he had been frank about his disbelief about religion, he honored Armenian traditions and rituals almost paradoxically, stories of which were recounted later that same day during dinner. 

Once again, in selfish defiance, I did not attend.

My brother and others noted how the apartment he lived in, the one I occupy now, seemed strangely absent without him; the absence of his presence so persistent that he was brought to tears, his memories so tied to the empty seat that our father once ubiquitously occupied. My sister in law was similarly moved, having not stepped foot into that apartment since before his passing.

That absence they felt was lost on me. I understood it, but did not feel it. My relationship with my father was very different. The memories I had out of sync with the way others remembered him; every positive memory accompanied by one where he would grow sicker and weaker, and so overwhelmingly awful that it was easier to simply block it out. 

I did not go to church because it was a reminder of how my father dealt with loss. I did not go to the cremation because the body that was burned was a final reminder of what he had become, not who he was. I did not want anymore awful memories.

Maybe I was wrong. 

As the ashes poured out the thick plastic bag, rapidly falling onto the surface of the water, it occurred to me that soon it will be April 24th; the day of remembrance for the Armenian Genocide. Almost every year my father would go to the Genocide Memorial at Tsitsernakaberd, bringing flowers and lighting incense the night before. 

A few years ago he stopped. Where once the memorial was empty on 23rd, now it had become an event, filled with marchers with torches, television cameras and priests. I asked him how he felt, no longer taking part in the ritual he himself had started. 

"It doesn't bother me," he told me, "What I did, I did for myself. If I can't do it one way, I'll find another way to mourn. The only thing that's important is that I remember"