poli oreo

In Ikaria, in Greece, in the nursing home, the first thing we saw when we walked in was this old woman with milky eyes and hands like bent chicken claws grasping at the air. She frightened us; we did not think this was what we'd signed up for. Her mandibles chewed a set of words over and over, Greek words, and we college students huddled in the doorway. We were both terrified of going near her and terrified of ending up like her, alone and demented in a piss-smelling fluorescent nursing home on a rocky wind-swept island.

And then Argie walked over and put a hand on the old woman's nightgowned back. "This is Stamatoula," she smiled at us, and the old woman reached up to touch Argie's face. We shrank away in sympathy, but Argie stood as Stamatoula caressed her cheeks, repeating the phrase. Her whitened eyes stared at something in the corner as her hands saw.

"What's she saying?" we whispered, embarrassed at our fear.

Argie listened, and then: "The Virgin Mary bless you."

And then: "Very beautiful."

This, over and over. The Virgin Mary bless you; very beautiful. 

We crept to her, eventually, and learned not to fear as she bent her head in our direction, seized our hands with one bent cold papery claw and saw our faces with the other. Her gums smiled as she blessed us. "Poli oreo." She would hold on for hours, and luckily, we learned to let her.

However often Stamatoula repeated it in those two weeks the group spent at the nursing home, I can't remember how to ask for the Virgin's blessing. Still, "Poli oreo", being shorter, has stuck with me. Very beautiful - it comes to mind at times like today, when, oppressively aware of my 24 hours left in Munich, I walked up the train stairs into Marienplatz and was greeted by the leaves, lit by sun and dancing against the clouds.

Poli oreo, I thought, and then it hit me why this was what she'd gotten stuck on - why Stamatoula, so Alzheimer's-riddled and close to death, could only repeat it again and again until her voice grew scratchy.

When you know you'll be leaving a place soon, you don't have a choice. You can only say how beautiful it is,  all of it, all the faces and trees and moods, and give it your blessing. You grasp it close, see as much of it as you can, and then let it go, however hard it is to disentangle your fingers.

The Virgin Mary bless you.