The prince charming of Armenian pop - Armenian Reporter

she been given an opportunityto release her own intense hatredof the Turk? Was that hatred releasedwith the strong expulsionof her anger as she shouted, “thebastards,” a word not in my oldfashionedmother’s vocabulary?I’ll never know for sure, but I canstate for a fact that my myrig wasso loving after this fourth brushwith death that she couldn’t harborhatred, not even toward theTurks. Love poured out of herheart, like a flower releasing itsperfume. Everyone around herfelt it.But this was not the only bizarreincident during my mother’slong illness. Her second bout withcongestive heart failure in 1986was also a stunner. With her heartlaboring in cardiac care, her doctordidn’t expect her to survivethe night. Three of us sat at herbedside, waiting. Myrig had beenunresponsive. Then she started tospeak.“Do you know why I’m still here?”she asked, sounding as if sheknew a great truth. She lookedat my cousin and said, “becauseyou don’t have any children.” Sheturned toward me and again said,“because you don’t have any children.”Then to my nephew sittingnearby she said, “And you don’thave any children. If I died no onewould know.”“They showed me a lot of pictures,”she continued.I wondered who the “they” were.I knew people with near-deathexperiences claimed to view theirlives at the moment of death. Wasmy mother sharing the same kindof vision with whoever the “they”were?She looked at my cousin andsaid, “Your mother was there.” Hismother had died thirty years earlier.She mentioned seeing an Armenianfamily who was a karmicmirror of her family and told usprophetic things that would happento members of our own family.Two of them have already cometo pass.Armenian Reporter Arts & Culture 11/10/2007“They showed the afghans,” shesaid. She had made afghans overthe years for everyone: relatives,neighbors, my friends, her friends,and my sister’s friends. Interestingly,after this vision she madethem specifically for disabled veterans.She turned her gaze to me.“You’re going to write a book aboutmy life.”“No, mom, not me,” I said. “Maybeyour other daughter will. She’sthe real Armenian in the family.”“No! You are! And you’re going tobe on the Donahue show!”The Donahue Show! In 1986 Donahuewas the king of talk shows,and she never, but never, watchedthat program, and I immediatelydismissed that statement as delusion.Then she ended her little speechwith, “They said it was my choice.”Now, that sentence gripped myattention. I’ve spent my adult lifetrying to make right choices, and itis not ever an easy thing and nowmy mother had made the choiceto stay on in defiance of her body’sfragile and deathly state. She hadmore to do before she could let go.I just didn’t know it at the time.Against the odds she rallied anda few days later was released fromthe hospital. In the middle of herfirst night home I heard her stir.I rushed into her bedroom andturned on the light. There she satin bed, her face absolutely radiant.She gave me a huge smile. “Do youknow what life is all about?” sheasked, not waiting for a reply. “It’sall about love and understanding,but everyone’s brain is not the same,so you help when you can. That’swhat life’s all about.” She smiled,laid herself down and went backto sleep. I will never forget thatnight.The next day she again couldn’tmove without help.I had dismissed much of her visionon that hospital bed as delusion.I certainly had no plans towrite a book about her or the Armeniantragedy. My mind was focusedon researching materials forexercises that stimulate the body’s“chi,” and I had been accepted tostudy at the Acupuncture InternationalTraining Center in Beijing,But what was happening to mymyrig was remarkable. I began toread about events that happened inthe Ottoman Empire during WorldWar I and became overwhelmed. Ihad not known the depth of theArmenian tragedy, and I began tounderstand my mother’s heartbreakingscars and those of Armeniansurvivors everywhere. Now Iknew my mother’s story needed tobe told, the whole of it, includingthe blessing that was granted herin her last years.I set aside my plans to study inChina to write my mother’s storyas a fictionalized memoir. Not realizingthe depth of the necessaryresearch, the nuances of writingfiction, or how many years it wouldtake, I had to write about this littlewoman who kept escaping deathand instead became more alertand more loving each time. Mymyrig taught me that when negativematrices like hatred and angerno longer rule the heart, streamsof fragrant love pour out of everycell in the body. She shined like athousand suns.fKay Mouradian’s fictionalized memoir ofher mother is called A Gift in the Sunlight:An Armenian Story and can be orderedfrom www.garodbooks.comKay Mouradian’smother crochetingan afghan.C15