Places: The Journey of My Days, My Lives

by Penghlis, Thaao

  With my parents at Universal Studios. (Author’s Collection)

  With Mum and siblings in Circular Quay, Sydney. (Author’s Collection)

  As they were carrying her out, she looked at me and said in Greek, as always, “Are you riding along with me?”

  “Well, of course,” I replied as I held her hand.

  We drove off and I will never forget that expression in her eyes; she felt safe at that moment. That lovely face looked haunted as a result of the disease. Fifteen minutes later she lay in a hospice room, wondering what was next.

  “Why hasn’t your father come to see me?” she asked.

  I covered my emotions and told her he thought it best to stay home, as too many visitors would tire her out. She accepted it and I excused myself to go to the bathroom.

  When I returned, a nurse was carrying a tray with ice cream into my mother’s room. I pulled her aside to explain that ice cream should not be given to patients with my mother’s disease as it fed the cancer.

  She bluntly replied, “Your mother has ten days to live. Let her enjoy her last moments.”

  Stunned, I was lost for words. Nobody had bothered to convey that to me. I sat with my mother for another hour as I watched her eat the ice cream. I told her quietly that I had to leave that evening as I had to be on set in two days.

  She lovingly touched my face and said, “Thank you for coming from so far away. My little boy, who had pennies in his pocket and grew up to be rich.”

  “I will see you soon, Mama, please wait,” I said.

  We held each other for a while and I kissed her goodbye. I prayed that this was not our last time together. I cried all the way home. Late that afternoon I sat with my brother and sisters exchanging ideas on how to proceed in case our parents died.

  My brother George was a schoolteacher, and a good one at that, happily married to Helen with two wonderful sons. My sisters were great, but part of the old regime that never allowed them to have their own careers, especially when they both excelled at school. With marriages arranged they certainly had reasons for regret. But their husbands, part of the old school, reflected the same beliefs. Certainly the doubts were there, always reminding me that I was a man, and therefore free to make my own decisions. If only they knew what it took, the struggle I went through to survive New York and Hollywood as an Australian Greek with a strange accent. It took a while for all of it to come together, and as a wise man told me, “Perseverance wins out.”

  The front door opened and there was my father standing with open arms to say goodbye. He didn’t want to miss that opportunity. We gasped, and he told us that he let himself out of the hospital as he was feeling fine. I kissed him on both cheeks and scolded him for his careless action. He dismissed it, and I spent my last hour in Sydney talking about our mother without telling him what the nurse had revealed. He seemed concerned that she would leave him behind.

  It was interesting to see what happens when you get older and handle the inevitable face of death when it is in front of you. He again told me how he loved the new bedroom and how our mother would be sitting up proudly, like a queen. He couldn’t wait for her to see it. I hugged him and my siblings, and as I turned back I remember thinking I should have held on to him a little longer.

  My parents’ wedding, November 17, 1940. (Author’s Collection)

  It was difficult leaving them behind, but my plane took off for the U.S. and I had plenty of time to think of all that had transpired. The Machiavellian Greeks and the beauty of their history all seemed unimportant in contrast with those human elements that we were all experiencing. The loss of your parents happens but once, and now it was our turn to face this common tragedy. I quickly immersed myself in my work. Every time a scene ended that first day back on set, my mind would move to the family in Australia. But while performing I learned to not waste those feelings that kept surfacing. I used my heavy emotions, filtering them through the dialogue and finding a creative way to release them.

  That evening I got a call from my sister Connie—Dad had had a massive heart attack and was in serious condition in the hospital. Within the next hour my other sister Pauline called to say he had passed away. She had witnessed the moment he had the heart attack. It had been massive and had thrown him against the wall, where he suffered a bad gash on his forehead.

  “At least he wasn’t alone,” I said.

  The inevitable had happened. “At the end of the week I will be back home. Make sure Mum doesn’t find out,” I told my sister.

  I hung up and unleashed a howl. I slipped onto the kitchen floor, where I sat for two hours. My mind kept racing. I was mainly concerned for my mum, but the way in which my father had died so violently upset me deeply. Did he let himself out of the hospital because he wanted to say goodbye to his children, standing on two feet, whole, that he knew his time was coming? But what of his wife Eva, how did he finish that? It was not over.

  For the next four days I checked my service to make sure the family was holding together, and thought how difficult it must have been for them to be in our mother’s presence and not reveal our father’s passing. That last day before I left work I checked my messages, but there were none. Within that half hour of getting home they had called. The message was: Mother died quietly, never knowing her husband had passed away. I was numb. But something strange had taken place. While my sister Connie was giving my mother some water, she commented that it tasted bitter. As my sister turned to get her something else to drink, she heard my mother call out, “Agapitos.” That was the Greek name for Peter. Connie turned and found my mother looking up at the ceiling with her eyes wide open; she had passed on, and my father had come to take her with him. Those next fourteen hours of flying back to Sydney were the longest I had ever known. We were to bury both of our parents together.

  My brother met me at the airport, and we went straight to his house where the rest of the family was waiting. As soon as I embraced my sisters, whatever emotions they had held back now surfaced. Everyone broke down. That night we went to a common ritual before the church service and burial where our parents were put on display so the families could pay their last respects. It was an unbelievable and solemn ceremony.

  After having lost so much weight, my mother’s face had been filled in to give her a better appearance. The makeup was overdone and I hardly recognized her. Still, I wanted to cry out, but I thought of Patera’s comment in Greece, “Greeks love tragedy, and why not, they invented it.” Suddenly some humor bubbled to the surface. I was not about to fulfill that cliché. My father was ice cold when I kissed him, and the scar caused by the hard fall was still prominent on his forehead. It was the evidence of how he had died that late afternoon in February.

  Mum and her first son, me. (Author’s Collection)

  Everyone took turns in their final goodbyes, muttering their personal words and bringing a final comfort. It was the last time we would see my parents. I thought perhaps they left together to prepare a life for us on the other side when it came time for our transitions. But now I kept thinking, With their souls carrying them to the other side, where do they go? A couple of months later I would find out.

  The day of the funeral, my favorite uncle, Bill, grabbed a cigarette out of my mouth and tossed it to the ground, stamped it out and cried, “That disease is what’s killing all of us.” Before I could respond, two hearses arrived together in front of my parents’ house. That visual has stayed with me my entire adult life. It was so shocking a reality that I had to be excused. The church service was packed with friends and relatives. I don’t remember much except the two coffins were closed, immersed in flowers, and the sermon by the priest where he proclaimed, “Their unusual love was the reason they left together.”

  I think my father died first because he was afraid to be left alone. My mother was exhausted and it was her heart that finally gave out before the cancer killed her. People came to the front of the church to pay their respects. I shook a lot of hands, as did my brother an
d sisters. While I was waiting outside the church a cousin came up to give his condolences, at the same time telling me about his struggles and how ten thousand dollars would help him out. At that moment my brother interrupted us. I looked my cousin straight in the eye and said, “The reason you’re struggling is because your timing sucks. You don’t listen.” We left him to ponder his inappropriate behavior. We carried the coffins into the hearse and left for the final ceremony at Botany Bay cemetery.

  Standing beside a large hole, the priest recited the final sermon. The ritual of lowering them down on top of each other, and the soil being shoveled in with a thud, sealed their final outcome. I was the last to leave. I struggled to tell them stories I couldn’t even remember now. There was no euphoria of going to a better place, just a new sense of knowing that only comes to you after your parents have gone. The relatives came back to my parents’ house and ate with us as a celebration of their life together.

  Three days later I had to leave as new scenes were being written into the show I had just left. I was expected to be on set that next Monday. I said my goodbyes, leaving everyone to quietly persevere with their own pain and eventual healing. In the years that followed I would still reach for the phone to call my parents when good news had crossed my path. But that was just one of many things that happened that automatically recalled my parents. Television shows, especially ones dealing with a son’s relationship to father and mother, opened up the floodgates.

  Work was going very well until I was suddenly called to my producer’s office to be told my character was being killed off. My producer was perplexed by my lackadaisical attitude, and I wasn’t about to give them the expected response—that of an actor defeated. I left feeling free with no obligations except to seek the person who could give me an answer to my question “Where did my parents go?”

  I eventually found a man named Ray Lingini who apparently was capable of reaching those who had crossed over. He was an Italian from New Jersey in his late thirties. One afternoon I sat with him in a guesthouse in Hollywood, where he began a foreign-sounding chant. On the table that separated us was a bottle of rum, some beads and a cigar.

  Interesting recipe, I thought.

  His body started to shake and a deep voice of a female spirit came through. He took the rum into his mouth and sprayed it all around me. He did this a number of times to clear the negatives. Then in a female manner lit the cigar and out came this roar.

  “Who are Eva and Peter?”

  Before I could answer, “she” responded in a Jamaican accent. I went totally quiet.

  “They are on the other side. Your mother went through a lot of pain and is exhausted. Who is Maria, because she is holding your mother in her arms to comfort her?”

  Maria was my mother’s sister who had died a year before from leukemia. I couldn’t say anything because emotions were erupting. “Peter is sitting on a bench looking very sad because he did not support his son through his youth and now he is grounded, somewhere between here and the spiritual world. In order to make his transition, he needs you to wear his ring, and that way he can connect and guide you in the coming years. It’s for you to help him pay the price for not having fulfilled his destiny. He apologizes and loves you very much.”

  It all made so much sense. I was happy to understand and know that we all have another place to go—that death is just a transition where the soul is able to go back and exist in peace with its lessons learned, and that karma is a law that comes at a price. I felt sad for my father’s lonely place but elated that my mother was safe. I left content that I had been guided to the right place. The amazing thing was that he actually knew their names, and that gave me a strange satisfaction. I called my family and told them of my experience. It brought them some peace of mind maybe believing that life was an ongoing process that didn’t end in a coffin.

  My mother and my Uncle Bill in 1930s Sydney. (Author’s Collection)

  My brother sent me my father’s ring, and I haven’t taken it off since. I sometimes find myself unconsciously touching it, and wonder if he is around me, fulfilling his karma. After that, I did not work for three years. I felt it was just so stupid, this game of disguise that was my profession for the past thirty years. My success was based on rescuing my parents and seeking their approval for having abandoned them in my early life. It was always for them but never for me.

  Now I was faced with finally looking at myself. I felt a void. I was full with knowledge but with an emptiness of not knowing where to put it. It took a few years to fully process this for my own understanding. It came through when I was ready. The day I awoke was the day I was asked to come back to the show where my character had been killed off, after my parents’ death. These were the transitions I had to go through to have a better understanding of change.

  Coming Full Circle

  Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives,

  You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country.

  Therefore rest in peace, there is no difference between the

  Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lay side by side, here in this country of ours,

  You, the mothers, who sent their sons from faraway countries,

  Wipe away your tears;

  Your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace.

  After having lost their lives on this land they have become our Sons as well.

  —Ataturk, 1934

  It was a winter’s dawn in Istanbul when I began my six-hour drive to Gallipoli in January of 2009. Being an Australian I went to pay homage to the lost souls of World War I, where thousands of Australian and New Zealand soldiers had perished. Such a stupid war, I thought, but some wars are necessary. The bravery of those men all began in the waters of the Dardanelles and ended there in January of 1916. So many died in vain, and by losing hundreds of thousands of young warriors Australia’s population became affected.

  This photo truly depicts how I felt at the funeral. (Sotos Kappas)

  The day was bitterly cold and raining so hard that the conditions seemed appropriate for the drama I was about to encounter. I stood in front of the epitaph left behind by Ataturk (1881–1938), Turkey’s military commander and statesman and a towering figure of the 20th century. Not many have achieved so much in so short a period, from decisively transforming the life of a nation to the profound inspiration he gave to the rest of the world.

  One of his great reforms was the emancipation of women and putting an end to the antiquated Ottoman dynasty, whose tale had lasted six centuries. During the 1920s he made the world take notice as a victorious commander who defeated his enemies. The world’s nations honored him as a leading peacemaker who upheld the principles of humanism and the vision of a united humanity.

  During this campaign (1915–1916) Ataturk was responsible for stopping the advance of the Allied Forces intent on capturing Istanbul. He commanded from the front lines with great courage and was hailed a war hero. Before his untimely death in 1938 he spearheaded his country’s economic recovery, and without him there would have been no modern Turkish Republic. And that’s why he was given the name Ataturk, meaning “Father of the Turks.”

  I was moved by the words he left behind posted on a billboard for all to see. It was called “The Gentleman’s War” because of the great care each side took of its wounded enemy. By the time I read the hundreds of epitaphs on the simple grave-stones with those haunting words by mothers in memory of their sons, I felt as if someone close to me had died. I was sobbing by the end, but the rain running down on my face hid my true emotions. It was all so simply set, even the ripple of the sea hitting the banks was too calm for such a setting.

  I imagined what it was like for the Allies when they landed and charged up that steep hill, being shot down like animals, one after another. I ran to the top, to see how they must have been exposed. The terrain was used as a weapon by the Turks that helped them win the war. Three hundred soldiers were killed every fifteen minutes. Due to the
nature of the landscape, the Allies couldn’t see the targets and the objectives they wanted to achieve.

  Gallipoli with my friend Sheri Anderson. (Author’s Collection)

  As I saw it, there was no chance of surviving—it must have been brutal. I was reminded of Peter Weir’s great film Gallipoli. As I walked through the fields I could envision the skeletal remains of soldiers across the landscape where they fought and died. They rotted where they had fallen with no ceremony. Churchill, England’s great leader, retired, and that huge loss would haunt him for the rest of his life.

  My thoughts were interrupted by a busload of Australian tourists. They too had come to pay homage to the fallen. The rain had stopped as they exited the bus. I couldn’t help but notice they were moved by what they saw. I was impressed they’d come so far to pay their respects. I heard a few begin conversing about Troy, pointing across the Dardanelles where the ancient battle between the Greeks and Trojans had been fought. I had visited there a couple of times before, and sat in the ruins imagining the cries of war echoing across the Troad, when the great fortress of Ilium was destroyed by fire. How many battles through history had been fought on this peninsula? It has been inhabited and embraced by an unbroken chain of civilizations since the dawn of mankind, each putting a stamp on their existence.

  Now these wars of the past helped me recall my own history. My Greek ancestral tree began in the 15th century when Istanbul was still Constantinople. They were merchants who eventually moved to an island called Kastellorizo, two miles from the Turkish mainland. That’s where my parents were born, and with great difficulty they took their cultural habits with them to Australia in 1938. Foreigners were searching for new lands in an English-speaking country, but they were not always welcomed. At first their traditions clashed with the locals, but their struggle won out as soon as their children became part of the foreign landscape.