Return to the Land of Your Home

Over the weekend, my 95-year old father developed pneumonia, and on Monday he died peacefully in his sleep. Known as “Buddy” by his family and friends, my father was kind and compassionate, possessed of a curious mind and a gentle but mischievous sense of humor, and beloved by practically everyone who knew him. He was an accomplished research physicist who invented the first underwater lasers while working for RCA in the early 1960s. Raised in the Congregational Church, my father discovered science as a teenager, and he eventually came to believe that science, rather than religion, would answer all of the big questions of life.

He was endlessly interested in those questions. He had a deep sense of wonder about the world. He would pause to marvel at the surf on the shore, on the way he could communicate with a cat, or on the observable thinking process of a toddler. It was from him that I learned the importance of curiosity and wonder in life.

I began to sing early in life, but it was my father who taught me how to listen to music. He was an avid jazz fan and we spent hours listening to his old 78 recordings of Billie Holiday, Errol Garner, and many others. He also applied that ability to listen to all of his human relationships. He listened to me when I expressed my ideas, my anxieties, my hopes, my sadness, my joy — and I always felt that he truly heard and understood. When he was with you, you felt that my father was truly present with you.

When I planned this trip to Armenia, I knew that there was a possibility that my father would die while I was away, but he was physically pretty healthy and we thought he might live quite a few more years. So I took the risk and came.

What does it mean that I am 5000 miles away from where my father breathed his last breath? On the one hand, the distance seems immeasurable; but on the other hand, I feel that there is an invisible tether linking me to him. My father loved his family — not just his immediate family but his entire extended family — steadfastly, and he often talked about his family’s origins in Sepastia and Hussenig (Kharpert). But he never visited those places in Western Armenia, which is now part of eastern Turkey and is where the Turks are violently repressing the Kurds who live there.

I am not in Western Armenia, where our family came from. But Eastern Armenia is still part of our ancient homeland. So I imagine that I am leading my father’s spirit to its origin. I am near Mount Ararat, surrounded by people who look like me and speak in my father’s first language. Let my consciousness bring his soul here. Let him come home.

Հաիրիկ, ես շատ, շատ կը սիրեմ։