“I know their beloveds’ wail. I know their beloveds wander their pandemic rooms, pass through their sudden ghosts. I know their loss burns their beloveds’ throats like acid. Their families will speak, I thought. Ask for justice. And no one will answer”
— On Witness and Respair: A Personal Tragedy Followed by Pandemic, Jesmyn Ward
I remember how Papa grilled hot dogs on Father’s Day. It was the first time his blistered fingers made the American delicacy. He didn’t know what a hot dog was and preferred traditional Armenian barbeque, which he found tastier, but he knew my sister and I wanted our hot dogs. I watched from a distance as I waited. He didn’t see me, but I saw him throw away some trash. When he went upstairs for more buns and vegetables, I took a peek inside the bin and saw four burnt hot dogs. In that trash bin, I learned how my father loved.
He never wanted us to see what he burnt. He shielded us from every form of burning you could ever imagine. For example, he knew his lungs were burning from cancer. But he kept it in a distant bin away from us - just like those burnt hot dogs. I miss him on that Father’s Day, when I didn’t think about lungs or cancer, and when coughing only came after laughter.
While he was Papa to me, he was Aleksandr Kevorkov: an Armenian refugee from Azerbaijan, a dental technician, and a funny immigrant father. He was a healthy man who loved to smoke. He was generous, humble, and hysterical; if you met him once, you would be friends for life. And he struggled with saying ‘no’ because he always cared for everyone but himself, working from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m., occasionally for free. Papa was a selfless immigrant who was all about family and work.
Papa was screaming and coughing with all his breath for the first time. He had pneumonia and could not go to work for the first time in decades. His coughs became drier. He was beginning to feel a type of tiredness he never felt before. He was always tired because he worked every holiday, every birthday, every anniversary, and every weekend. But, his exhaustion felt odd this time. His eyes were hazy these days, filled with tears whenever he looked at me. He would say his eyes were irritated, and that he needed to shed some tears to clear his vision. Papa lied to me for the first time.
My mom was resilient, sure that it was just his typical January cold. She made him warm tea with drops of lemon and overfilled his favorite mug with ripe ginger roots all day. For the first time I saw them hold each other tight; my parents were seldomly affectionate with each other, but in those quiet days, their love was tainted with a fragility and delicacy that told me that it was always there but cleverly hidden from us.
She made him his favorite borscht, rubbed his pale feet, and consistently reassured him it would all be okay. Papa smiled and talked more when she was around and when the sun was bright and fresh. The second part of the day he would lose all his progress, coughing up blood, complaining about the heaviness of his chest, screaming with rage. He said he felt something was eating his chest. We thought he was exaggerating.
My mom went to the pharmacy at 12:30 p.m., and she brought him all sorts of colorful liquids and gel pills, hoping it would sleep away the pain. She rubbed the VapoRub-Vodka hybrid mixture on his chest right before he went to sleep, and he told her that it made him feel better. He did not want her to worry. He knew that if he spoke the truth, she would run to the pharmacy again, maybe in her pajamas, find him another bottle of cold chest rub, and pray the green one would work better than the blue one at home. Papa went to bed quietly that night and my mom fell asleep next to him with a smile, proud of her efforts as a makeshift nurse.
Papa’s heart felt warm when I hugged him, like an oven, but his chest was burning like never before: he could no longer eat, walk, or speak. He would wear the same clothes: a red shirt with plaid pants. Things shifted fast, and I can only remember the image of Papa standing in our living room right before mom hurriedly took him to the hospital. It would be the last time my sister and I would see him, too. None of us knew that.
Right after they left for the hospital, I had a moment to sit by the piano after weeks of being separated from it. I was excited to revisit my favorite hobby, but I also felt guilty about it. I decided it would be okay to play one piece: Chopin’s Revolutionary Etude—only the first page. Papa loved how I played it with a breathless speed. But to me, it wasn’t fast enough. Allegro Con Fuoco. That was the dream. In my overdue practice session, I played the Etude with a ferocity like never before. I was panting and sweating and out of breath. My piano was on fire. I broke every key with my hot fingers. I felt like a fierce warrior. I felt like I could survive anything. I felt like after Papa returned home from the hospital, he would feel what I felt. Papa would feel as if he heroically won his battle, too.
Mom called from the hospital, so I quickly closed the piano and ensured it looked untouched. She whispered to me that the doctors were running lots of tests on Papa, and he would be staying overnight. One night became two weeks, and then, Papa was fighting for his final breath.
On March 6, 2018, we lost him to terminal Stage IV lung cancer. I wasn’t woken up at 7 a.m. for school that day, so I went downstairs confused until I saw my sleep-deprived mom, aunt, and grandma, who gave me the news. I felt numb for a long time. Papa was 55, I was 16, my sister was 14. My memories of those days are blurry. But I remember how I held my mother, my sister, my aunt, and my grandmother.
I remember the sacrifices, too. I went to the first half of my father’s funeral while spending the second half in a locked car with my 85-year-old grandmother Nelly, who never wanted to acknowledge that her son left this world before her. I remember dodging the rain and sitting in a cold car, and her saying, “Papa left for a long-term vacation.” I nodded, repeating he was surely having a good time wherever he was. As her granddaughter, I knew I was doing the right thing. I devoted all my care and attention to her because I knew that day was the worst of her entire life. I held her hands, making sure that she was warm enough, and I hoped my father was proud of me.
According to Armenian traditions, after 40 days passed, we could watch TV again or very quietly listen to music with our headphones on. I forgot we had a piano at home. I was a junior in high school, studying hard to avoid everything and everyone. I stayed home all the time. A few friends asked how I felt. They empathized as much as they could. They didn’t know how to give hugs, but they thoroughly explained complex math problems I couldn’t understand to me. They didn’t go to prom that year to accompany. They cared in their own nerdy, beautiful ways.
But, the stiffness in my chest wouldn’t fade with time. I cried myself to sleep every night. Asked my mom how she felt every second of the day. Stared at my grandmother to make sure her breathing was consistent. The inability to remember my past self before my father died was relentless. Grief challenges hope. It’s not linear, and it leaves one breathless.
In January 2022, I lost my grandmother Greta to COVID-19 as she developed pneumonia. I relieved the traumas of my past. The same loss of breath, of love, and home hit me again. I was powerless and angry. It was my lowest since I lost my father in 2018. For the 10th time, I returned to therapy to treat my depression and anxiety. I hoped it would give me peace. But through trial and error, I’ve learned that therapy doesn’t fix me. Yet, I found comfort in hearing the stories of grieving people.
Fernando Acuna, an international graduate architecture student from Mexico, told me his resilient story - the grief of losing a father too soon. Since he lost his father to pancreatic cancer a little over a year ago, his tears are fresh. While sharing how his father’s tragic death gave him “depression all the time,” Acuna says, “burying the wounds won’t heal them with time.” With tears in his eyes, he describes his late father as a generous and compassionate man who gave them everything they had. He remembers his heart sinking when he got the horrifying call, learning his father was no longer breathing on his own. Taking pauses in breaths and thoughts, Acuna remembers his favorite memory as a 5-year-old in Manchester, where he would run with his father and brother. Those were simpler times when breathing was easy, when being breathless meant you won a competitive race between siblings.
Dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic and his father’s cancer diagnosis simultaneously, Acuna’s perspective is inspiring to me. He says, “COVID got me a lot of quality time with my family because we managed to stay together - I’m grateful for it allowing me to get closer to my dad.” His story shines a light on what breathless illness does to your mind, yet it doesn’t take the soulful memories with your loved ones.