Beginning (Again)

Note to reader: 

I am starting a new series. My aim is to reflect on my recent trip to Ikaria, Greece to teach a study abroad course called Aging in Greece. I taught the course with my spouse, T. Seventeen students with a range of majors and backgrounds came with us, as did our daughter and her godmother/my dear friend J. This was my fourth time teaching the course, which includes an intensive service-learning project at a gerokomeio (old people's home) in Ikaria, Greece--and T's first time. The trip was intense, and it was difficult while I was there to reflect deeply on what was happening while I was there. This feels like the right time to look backwards--and forward--and to share a bit of what I experienced there, from my perspective.

While my primary goal is to write about this trip, in particular, I can already tell this series will be, also, a reflection on my decade-long connection to the gerokomeio, as well as my life-long connection to island where my father and maternal grandparents grew up, the island I consider my heart-home.

I won’t promise to write every day, but I will write often this summer, and post here when I have completed a new piece. As always, these are rough pieces, not fully revised or edited, risky and raw, but, for some reason, necessary to share.

Beginning (Again)

When I walked up the gravel road toward the gerokomeio in Ikaria, my spouse and co-teacher and 17 students trailing behind me, I was struck not by the amazing view—olive trees cascading down toward the sea below, the wildflowers dotting the mountain—but by the silence.

We didn’t know what we were walking into. I had tried to make this clear, over and over, in pre-trip meetings and over e-mail—but now the reality that I was leading a large group of Midwestern, female, mostly blond students who did not speak a word of Greek toward a building that may or may not actually be open was real for the first time. As always, T was calmer than I, even though this was her first visit.

I saw the arch of the monastery and the priest’s home to my left. I remembered my first visit, in 2005, full of pomp and circumstance—the half dozen priests who had shown up to welcome us, the more than 30 residents, seven staff, and K and T, the dedicated volunteers and founders of the gerokomeio, eagerly awaiting our arrival, smiling.

I remembered my second visit, in 2007, when one of the residents, M, had seen me from a distance walking toward the front door and shouted out my name. I burst into tears, amazed that this woman, developmentally disabled and elderly, remembered me from two years earlier. Some of my students also began to cry as I hugged and kissed her.

The third visit, in 2010, had involved a less dramatic welcome, but a welcome nonetheless—that time, K, a particularly feisty resident, was the first to greet us--by yelling at me for not having bothered to write to her in the last three years since my last visit. (She had a point).

This time, five years had passed. The front doors that had always been wide open in true Ikarian fashion were closed tight. I told the students to wait for us, and T and I and knocked on the door. No one answered. I opened it slowly. The living room was dark. I waited for my eyes to make the adjustment from the bright, Greek morning sun to that darkness.

“Maybe there’s nobody here,” I whispered to T.

That’s when I saw them—two women sitting side by side, one in her wheelchair, and the other at the edge of the couch.  They were both wearing diapers that were visible beneath the hems of their short nightgowns. They were clean—their hair had clearly been recently washed, which I took as a good sign—but they were not dressed in clothing, something that had never been the case in previous years. 

In past visits, all of the residents had always been dressed in their rooms, then wheeled or guided to the kitchen for breakfast, then wheeled and guided to either the patio or living area, to start their day. In this way, the gerokomeio I remembered mirrored the typical Ikarian day—a short period of privacy, a small breakfast, and then a trip to the village square for coffee and conversation before work, and at around 2:00, before the midday nap, and again late at night.

T and I went over to them and knelt down, taking their hands, greeting them with the customary kiss on both cheeks. I didn’t recognize them from previous visits, and they didn’t recognize me. I told them who we were, why we had come. I apologized that my Greek was not very good, and explained that T did not speak Greek. I told them there were students outside who were eager to meet them.

There was a silence. One of them finally said, in Greek, “Welcome.” The other leaned into her cane, resting her head against it, and sighed.

Just then, a young woman I also didn’t recognize emerged from the shadows of one of the hallways bordering the main living area. She was wearing sweatpants and a stained t-shirt, as well as gloves. She was skittish, but she smiled nervously at us and said, “Welcome.” She apologized for how she looked and introduced herself as N. 

I told her who we were and asked if she’d known we were coming, and she said yes, the word had gotten to her. “But we have only six residents now,” she said sadly. “And there are just four of us left, taking turns caring for them. We’re not being paid. I’m sorry there’s no one else here to greet you.”

I assured her this was just fine.

“I’m sorry, too, about the darkness,” she went on. “We can’t turn on the lights because we can’t afford the electricity. And we had to get new front doors because K, one of the residents, tends to wander away if the doors are open. So now it’s even darker.”

“K is still here?” I asked. “The same K who has lived here since 2007?”

Yes, she said, motioning toward K’s room.

I went in to greet her, excited to finally see a familiar face. I expected to be scolded for not writing, or to ask if I wanted to dance with her, or to demand to meet the students immediately, or to offer us something to eat. I tempered my enthusiasm by reminding myself that if she was wandering now, she was probably dealing with dementia, which, given her age, mid-90s, was not necessarily surprising. I hoped the core of her personality would remain.

T and I peeked into her room. She was sitting in a chair by her window, watching the students who were right outside. She looked exactly the same--a black scarf wrapped around her head, and the same black dress I remembered her wearing in earlier visits. She turned her head toward us and nodded when we greeted her, but she wouldn’t look us in the eye.  

“Are you Manolis?” she asked. 

I smiled, felt my body flood with a tingling relief. She remembered me. She had always called me by my last name.“Yes,” I said.

“You have come too late.”

Too late.

I took a deep breath. T and I looked at each other, and silently decided to do the only thing we could do—go out to the front patio, where the residents had, in past years, always been gathered, to talk to our students, who were there, standing in a tight circle, waiting for us.

As we walked down the dark hallway, we heard someone crying out from the room across from K’s. Help, help, she was shouting in Greek. I didn’t need to translate that word for T—her tone of voice said it all.

T and I stood at the edge of our students’ circle, at which point, I burst into tears. They just stared at me, waiting for me to say something.

Up to this point, I’d met each of the students once or twice in orientation sessions. I had known only three of them from previous classes or volunteer opportunities. We had spent three days touring Athens and reading about Greek culture, politics, and healthcare. I had promised extra credit to a group of students who had ordered the least unusual foods at an Athens restaurant if they would eat my leftover sardines. We had gotten stuck in a freak rainstorm on our way home from the Acropolis tour, given in, and started puddle-jumping. We had spent one day touring Ikaria, taking photographs of monasteries and beaches and quaint village squares. We had one long evening class planning some get to know the residents activities. The students were dutifully clutching photographs of their families and hometowns, which they had been instructed to bring along on the trip as conversation pieces. I realized, looking at them, that I had to pull it together.

I explained the situation. I took a deep breath, and asked them what they wanted to do. We discussed our options for awhile. What was our role now? What did we already know, and what more information did we need to know, to even hope to make some kind of impact here? What might we do to make things better instead of more difficult?

By this point, K had opened her balcony door and was standing just feet away from our conversation, watching us intently. I didn’t realize it until a student nodded her head toward K’s balcony. I turned and met her eyes. She looked away. She couldn’t understand anything we were saying, but still, she was listening in her own way, visibly upset by the fact that we were clearly upset.

The one staff, N, peeked her head out the door to see what we were doing. “We have a lot of students with us,” I said to her in Greek, apologetically.

“It’s OK,” she said. And then she disappeared back inside.

There was a long silence.

“I think we should go inside,” one of the students said finally. “Let’s just go in like we were going to do, introduce ourselves, and see what happens next.”

Sometimes it’s better to walk through a closed door than to walk away from it, even if it seems impossible that crossing the threshold could do any good at all.