Mom and dad had the habit of playing backgammon in the family room after dinner. This gave them a chance to chit chat, tease each other, play, munch on nuts and dried fruits before sleep time, having accomplished everything they set out to do that day. And they always did.
Mom's motto was "don't leave for tomorrow what you can do today." She was good at it and time and again us siblings were surprised to discover that she had done it again. She was ready. During her last years on this earth she would tell me "I just read the newspaper cover to cover and I don't remember anything I read." I would tell her "me too, mom" which was partly true and is getting truer.
It took her a while to accept that she forgets and to say so when needed. I had told her, it is easier to say "I forgot" than to fight for being right when there are two rights of opposing views.
We all forget.
Dad was forgetful from as long as I can remember. Absent-minded, rather, which created situations where we found ourselves in his car being kidnapped towards the airport instead of heading to the mountains. So mom had to remember for him too.
When I lived with them for a couple of years, from my studio on the second floor, I would hear the sounds of the dices being thrown on the board and the comments and exclamations that followed. Mom was more expressive than dad of course. She felt challenged in this game or any other game with dad because it was dad who won most of the time.
I was in California when we heard of dad's passing and my brother and I traveled to New Jersey but not in time for the wake that had ended just as we arrived home.
Mom, Anahid, told me how much dad, Vahan was loved by the community, how the church was full of people who had come to pay their respects and what had happened the night before they took dad to the hospital.
As usual, they had two games of backgammon. They were 1-1 when Vahan decides to end the match and said "Anahid, come on, let us go to bed in a tie". They did just that.
I have to open a parenthesis here and because I am writing in English it just occurred to me that the word tie in Armenian is not used for the fancy thing men put around their shirt. No, dad did not put on a tie to go to bed. He would never do that. Nor is it used to describe the outcome of a game.
In Armenian, the word is equal. There are no ties that bind, nor give the feeling of incompletion. If all men are created equal why shouldn't your last words be "let us go to bed equal tonight, Anahid."
Because in the morning, when Anahid was tending to her garden, her friend, Knarig, shows up running and asking "What is the matter with Mr. Vahan? I just called you guys, he answered and he couldn't talk." Dad had had a stroke and after a second one at the hospital, left us to more peaceful pastures.
And Anahid told me this as soon as she saw me after the wake. I am forgetful too but Vahan's last words were too important not to remember.
