Poem by George Theoharis
A FEW DETAILS FROM THE NORMAL LIFE
AND THE DEATH OF MRS IRENE KARVONIS
She let her last breath in bed at the end of the century. During her last year of her life her memory gradually left her leading her to the starting point. She became again the little girl who she always was. She shrank into a handful of a person due to the absence of the fluids of robustness dressed in her freshly washed nightie, she was happy for a sprig of basil you would offer her or by giving her the chance to narrate incoherent stories.
She let her last breath having reached her ninety-three years. Just before she died she turned and said to her son who was by her side “I was born in Syros in 1906. I remember the day Halley’s Comet pass by the Earth. We had peas and small fried fish. They were forcing me to eat, but I wanted to see the comet, dad.”
When she closed her eyes and with the commotion that was created among the relatives who waited for her, her not yet forty days old grandchild started crying.
And if this story seems a bit melodramatic and if the question arises “for what reason a normal life deserves its place in art?” I wonder: “why the normal life of the kind Mrs. Irene Karvonis doesn’t deserve it, when among other things, she managed to finally answer the merciless question of “what shall we cook today?”
Manolis 