Elizabeth Alexander is an American poet. She read a poem during the 2009 inauguration of Barack Obama. She is a mother of two and was married to a man who died unexpectedly in 2012. She wrote a memoir about this called The Light of the World.
Dimitra, for that was my wife’s name, and I both read the book a few years ago, having discovered it independently of each other. Not until a few months after her death did I remember it and not until this spring, during a visit to the United States, did I finally get my hands on a paper copy.
Though everyone’s story of grief and loss is different, the book really resonated with me when I re-read it. And then I came to the passage where Elizabeth and her children, a year after the husband’s death, decide they need to move out of their house.
Yes! I realised immediately. Yes! So do I.
I always knew I would eventually be leaving Greece, but I also thought this would be ‘when the right opportunity would present itself’. Suddenly I realised that I needed to take matters into my own hands and that it was actually very important to do so, perhaps more important than the actual moving away.
After Dimitra died, it helped me a lot to continue living our life, in our house and doing the job that, in many ways, we had built together. It gave me the time and space to digest what had happened and the safety of, in many ways, living life like I had done it for the past decade.
Now it is just as important for me to move on. Not to forget what happened or what our life was life, but to properly close that chapter in my life. To help us become me again.
And thus I will be leaving our house and Greece, and also my job, for new adventures. I don’t know yet where I will be moving to or what work I will be doing, or when this will place, but the necessary things have been set in motion. Alea iacta est.
It is exciting. It is exactly the opportunity provided by Dimitra’s death that I have talked about so often that I am now going to chase. I feel immensely privileged that I am able to do this.
It is also scary. Moving isn’t easy and moving internationally (which I have done twice) is even more difficult. There are many things I will need to discard of. And I have not made big decisions like this on my own for a very long time.
And this is exactly why it is such an important thing to do. I want to be doing great things, I keep saying. It is very important that I take this first step on my own.