Lorne Shirinian: The Rule of Three

For my grandsons Rafael, Ari, 

Joshua and Aaron Shirinian

Un coup de dés n’abolira jamais le hasard

Stéphane Mallarmé

For most, 

memory lasts

but three generations

father 

son 

and grandson

The next will likely never know

her grandfather’s father 

Stories of him will haunt

much will remain unknown

fragments and shadowy descriptions

of a life almost lost but for rumour

For the lucky ones a faded photo

in the end family history built on supposition

I never knew my grandfather

My father hardly knew his father

In 1915 before the massacres

Ottoman soldiers forced him into a labour battalion

never to return

the absence of fathers became the Armenian curse

My father barely knew his mother

yet the persistent memory

a park in Istanbul in 1921

he is eleven the last time he sees her 

she holds him close and feels

his soft wet cheek against hers

she whispers you’re safe here for now

my son 

I can’t give you a future in this country 

I must leave while I can

perhaps after the war… 

he feels her fear and shudders

she hugs and kisses him and says goodbye

turns in pain and leaves him crying 

in the orphanage

Then the killing began again

Armenian orphans were taken

over the Ionian Sea to the safety of Corfu

Many times he had escaped death

wandering from one column to another 

on the forced march east

How often did he cry for his mother 

when he became a father

How often

            she leaves him crying in the orphanage

In 1965 in our living room in Toronto

I asked my father if he remembered his father

his face, his voice, his touch

I wanted something to hang on to

He just shook his head

and looked away

There are no pictures of my grandfather

but my father had a memory of him he shared 

which I turned into a story for safe keeping

Can you hear his voice, I asked

In my dream, he said, he speaks but 

I can’t hear him 

My mother had no memory of her parents

She was a baby when they were exiled and killed

for being Armenian

She had no idea how she survived

who saved her and placed her in different orphanages

Family history erased in two generations

My sons knew my parents

and have good memories of them

My four grandsons know me but it’s likely

their sons and daughters will not

But I will leave stories, books, photographs and films 

for them all

Most of us are victims of the three-generation fate

of human memory

Oh, my grandsons, I want to dance at your weddings with your beautiful grandmother

I want to help lift your chairs high in the air

to celebrate your lives

I might be absent but

I will leave you much to remember

May 1, 2021