Remembering

Today is a day to remember. First of all it's the memorial day for the Pearl Harbor attacks, which is where my Grandpa Dabel served during WWII. He survived but of course many did not. I have also been able to visit the memorial site in Hawaii. It was crazy to be there and to see and know that one of the ships was just below my feet. War is crazy.

Today is also important to me because it is the memorial day of the major earthquake that hit Armenia in 1988. I served in the main city up north that was hit by it. 25,000 people died. (which you've read a lot about by now from me.) I know that I have been writing a lot about Armenia lately it seems, but for some reason it's been on my mind more than ever. I think it's because I am finally ready to face it and everything that happened there. So forgive me as I go back there again in my head.... (although you really don't have to read this, of course.)

Our last day together, my temporary Armenian  companion, Sister Helelyan, and I had had an unusual day. We were serving up in the country’s second largest city Gyumri. In 1988 Gyumri was devastated by a massive earthquake, killing thousands and it had never been able to rebuild.

            The people talked about the earthquake everyday. It was still so fresh for them, even though it had been 19 years. I couldn’t blame them though, the fallen city still looked like it recently shook. Just around the corner of the city square still laid the massive crumbled church. Grass now grew in its cracks, the black stones lifelessly scattered around as if the earthquake had happened yesterday. Many of the people still lived in their “temporary” homes called “domiks.” What they really were, were decaying box cars without wheels. And they were not temporary.

            Sometimes when we would walk by a heap of mangled concrete, I wondered if there were still bodies buried underneath.

            In each home the family would have a photo on the wall of each loved one who had died, many of those victims of the earthquake.  They took the deceased person’s passport photo, had it enlarged, and then framed it. It was always a faded blue tinted photo with the person frowning or straight faced at best. It was depressing.

            Some homes had many of these photos up. Every home had at least one. Once I met a man who lost his wife and children in the earthquake. He spent his days drinking.

            And all of this in the middle of a freezing cold and miserable winter.

            It happened on December 7^th, 1988.

            Fast forward 19 years and there we were. Sister Helelyan and I. December 7^th, 2007. We didn’t get many verbal lessons taught that day to people investigating the church. Instead we wandered to the graveyard like everyone else. People played sad and melancholy duduk music from the stores and speakers on the street, haunting us everywhere we went.

            It was snowing.

            We helped an old woman walk up to her son’s grave and put the two flowers down she had brought. To give someone an even number of flowers represents death and an odd number is life. (So it’s not very nice to give a living person an even number of flowers.) Everyone had brooms and were sweeping all the snow off the tombstones. We brushed at the woman’s son’s grave with our gloves. That day we taught missionary discussions with our actions and reverence alone.

            Sometimes it’s hard for me to believe that I saw the things that I did and lived the way I did. Being in Armenia is like going back in time- a real way to time travel. It was encapsulated in gray colors and dust, hidden away from the rest of this world. It was sad and forgotten.

            And it was magnificent.

That night as I laid in bed I thought about all the gravestones and snow.

And tonight, December 7, 2011, I will think of it again. 

I will never forget.