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After meeting some of her long time friends at her wake, I finally realized part of what I've always been told is true... I am almost exactly like my Yiayia (and I hope that I will always be).

Her wedding picture was up, and her greek girlfriends rearranged the chairs in the room to surround her and it. They were crying, talking, crying, talking, pointing, turning around to look at me and my father, gossiping, laughing, crying, talking, crying, talking, pointing, turning around to look at me, gossiping, laughing, crying and repeating the cycle again and again. After about the fifth time, I finally asked my father what they were saying, and it was "you look exactly like Yiayia".
It was something that I was always told but never saw myself... perhaps because I was too close to the situation, or because at the point where I finally started to look her hunched stature and gravity had made it a little to difficult for me to see the resemblance. But there, in that room, looking at her wedding picture I saw the resemblance, and I realized that I want the resemblance to go further than just our looks.
I was told things about my Yia Yia, things that I knew, like that she loved to have people around her and to talk for what seemed like forever. And things that I didn't know, like that she had a way of talking to people, listening to them, and remembering facts about them that nobody knew she retained. Her friends would be shocked when she called up two weeks later to make sure that doctors appointment of their nephew went ok. Information, and tidbits that her friends and nurses wouldn't remember telling her about, but her remembering specific details. She genuinely cared about not only these select few people that came religiously in the last few years to her home bound side, but about everyone that she was connected to- even if it was in the smallest way, like the pharmacist who she had never met. She not only cared about these people but they cared about her. She had a spark, and energy about her that caused people to genuiely carea bout her has well. Like that pharmasist, who she had never met face to face had expressed heartfelt concern and sympathy for our family's loss.
That is the part of her that I hope I will inheret or at least learn how to become, to care not only about my family and friends, but to care about every person that I come across in my life. I want to have that spark that she had, that enabled people to open up to her and get to know them, in a way that not many people do.
So from this trip that was meant to say have a good rest Yiayia, I left with more, a desire to be like her, not only in looks, but in heart, mind, and soul.

That is my hope. To be like my Yiayia, in more ways than one.

έχουν μια καλή Yia Yia ανάπαυσης (have a good rest Yiayia) you deserve it.


comparison photo will be posted soon.