Today the nation remembers the brave men who fell during the invasion of Normandy.

Today another name was added to the terrible register of the dead. My maternal grandmother passed away this morning at around 4:30. She was a wonderful woman, largely responsible for raising me as a child (along with my grandfather) while my parents were struggling at work trying to make ends meet. A little more than ten years ago, if memory serves, she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's and slowly drifted away. She was in a nursing home for the past few years (my grandfather lived with us for a while before he died of cancer in 1993; it was then that my grandmother started getting worse, so we tried to have her live with us, but since my parents were away at work all day it made things rather complicated; they hired a stay at home nurse for the daytime, but none of them could be trusted, as we soon found out, and so my parents decided she'd be better off at a nursing home, though the workers there weren't that much better). She was in the hospital for the past few months, her brain so mangled by the disease that all she could do was lie in bed and moan incoherently. I visited her once during spring break, and that was difficult enough. My mother visited her constantly; she has a depth of strength I'll never have.

I wish I could remember my grandmother better (along with my grandfather, for that matter). Looking back I have just a few memories of her, and even those are very general. I remember her drawer full of candy (after immigrating to America she developed a bit of a sweet tooth), and how she was always giving me lollipops and those little striped candy cane mints. I remember her cooking: it was always meat and potatoes for me. I have more memories of my grandfather, but that's because my father talked about him quite a bit after he died.

So now my father and his two parents are gone. All that remains from that immediate family is my uncle. Yet I can't help but think that, regardless, that family is gone entirely. My uncle was born in America, and never really experienced the life that the rest of his family knew. He doesn't have the same sort of connection with the people and culture, nor does he have the same sort of mastery of the old stories my father and grandparents knew. An entire history, a wealth of stories and anecdotes about my family is now gone forever. I guess the tie was really severed when my father passed back in January, since my grandmother was in no condition to communicate with us for some time now, but the realization didn't occur to me until I heard the news this morning.

I knew I'd never be able to trace my family back through time with the same sort of accuracy of others, but there were a lot of stories that my father had promised to tell me that he never had a chance to, and now I'll certainly never hear them. It's such an empty feeling, to be so painfully aware of the chasm that exists between yourself and all the years and people that have led up to you. My family's land was stolen by the Turks during the invasion of Cyprus, and those who were the last to live there are now passed. The knowledge of an entire bloodline and its significance is now lost forever, apart from the little I can recall if I search my mind hard enough (I've already told friends about the odd visions and such that are hereditary on my father's side). Plus, the line is now mine to continue (I was my parents' first child, my father was his parents' first child, and so forth as far back as my grandfather could count).

I humbly ask those who are so inclined to offer up prayers for my father and his parents today.