As I was writing th
is story, my Word program froze several times, and I lost what I had written. This has never happened before. The fifth time, it occurred to me that Artemis was not happy with the way I was telling the story of her life and death. I lit a candle and prayed for her spirit to fly free like the gulls over the sea that I could see out my window and began again. The words in italic are the ones she added.
Yesterday morning I heard the church bells tolling a plaintive, “dong, dong, dong,” as they do when someone dies. Quite a few people die in our village in winter, and I did not wonder who it might be. You didn’t think of me? A few hours later, I saw the death notice on a telephone pole next to my car. My friend and neighbor Artemis died. The words “Theos voithos,” “with the help of God,” came immediately to my mind.
Artemis was born ninety years ago, in the wake of the Asia Minor catastrophe when thousands of Greeks were driven out of their homes in the land that was to become Turkey. Unlike many of the older Greek ladies I have known, Artemis was not a happy person. She grew up during the depression, the Second World War, and the Civil War that followed. She was beaten as a child. She married a man with a young son whose first wife had died in childbirth and then had three sons of her own. No daughters to help me out, no one to keep me company. When her husband died too young, Artemis ran the taverna known as The Clean Neighborhood on her own. Molivos was a very poor village up through the mid-1980s. Life was difficult after my husband died. It was not easy to keep the neighborhood clean.
One of Artemis’ sons took over the taverna some years ago. Artemis continued to live in the small two-story stone house next to the restaurant. In recent years, she was often sitting in her small front porch garden filled with flowers and pot plants when I came into the restaurant. I had golden hands. The flowers always grew for me. In the way that is typical of village women who were unhappy in their own marriages, Artemis tyrannized her daughters-in-law, particularly, because she was near-to-hand, the one who had married the son who took over the restaurant. Finally, someone to look after me. But they were always busy. They didn’t have time for me.
In her last years, Artemis was suffering from pain caused by a knee problem that might have been fixed with an operation she refused. I was afraid to die. Feeling sorry for her and for my friend, I decided to spend time with Artemis. My goal was to listen to her stories with compassion and an open heart, in the hopes that, knowing that she had been heard, Artemis could release some of the bitterness she held within her. You had time for me. You listened.
I did not think I achieved my goal. The pain in Artemis’ knee got worse, and she became more demanding and unhappy. I am sorry to say that in her last two summers, I avoided Artemis because I resented the way she was treating my friend. I didn’t understand that. You were my friend too. Still, whenever she saw me, Artemis would call out, “you know, don’t you, I love you very much.” There was so much sadness in me. Can a lifetime of pain be healed in a single summer?
In the fall, Artemis took to her bed. Women were hired to look after her. Most of them left within a week because she treated them badly. I wanted my daughter-in-law to look after me. This was my right, after looking after so many others myself.
Around Christmas time, Artemis took a turn for the worse. Her son and daughter-in-law were summoned from the village on the mainland where they spend their winters. Artemis improved in body, but not in spirit. It hurt all the time. I was afraid to die.
A few days ago my friend called. She was at her wit’s end. She had not slept in weeks. Artemis was crying and screaming all the time. I couldn’t stop wailing. Everything hurt.
As I waited for my friend to come for coffee, I thought about what I had learned when my mother was dying. My mother told me that she was afraid God had forgotten about her because she had not come to church in many years. After I shared this with one of my mother’s friends, she told my mother that God loves everyone and had not forgotten her. My mother died the next night.
“Maybe Artemis needs to know God loves her,” I suggested to my friend. If God loved me, he would not send me this pain. “I thought of that too,” my friend said, “so I called the priest to come to the house and asked him to speak to Artemis. He told her that he knew she had always come to church when she was able to and assured her that she was in good standing with God.” Then why does God send me so much suffering? Surely God does not love me.
“The priest offered to bring communion wine to the house, but Artemis refused.” What good would communion do me? “He insisted, saying that everyone who could not come to church took communion at home during the holidays. She agreed that he could visit on the next Sunday.” I didn’t wait for that priest. I died before he came.
My mother’s friend said that sometimes a dying person needs to be told it is alright for them to die. Her husband had been hanging on in a coma. Her priest told her she had to tell her husband he could die. As soon as she did, he let go. I suggested to my friend that perhaps Artemis needed to hear this too. What can they tell me? I’m afraid of dying.
Artemis died yesterday morning. Her body was washed and laid out in her home. I thought you would come. Following a funeral service in the church, she was buried in the cemetery in Molivos yesterday afternoon. You were not there.
I did not come to the house because I did not know. I did not come to the funeral because I had an appointment. I am sorry. I am thinking of you now.
I have come to the end of the story. My computer did not freeze again. You started listening to me.
I have listened to you, dear Artemis. Will you listen to me? God loves you. God loves everyone. There is no judgment and nothing to fear.
When I lit the candle for Artemis before beginning to rewrite her story, I felt her angry, in the ground, complaining of the cold. I am not there now. Open the window. I will fly free.
Carol P. Christ is author or editor of eight books in Women and Religion and is one of the Foremothers of the Women’s Spirituality Movement. She leads the Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete in Spring and Fall. Photo of Carol by Andrea Sarris.
A Serpentine Path: Mysteries of the Goddess
will be published by Far Press in the spring of 2016. A journey from despair to the joy of life.
Goddess and God in the World: Conversations in Embodied Theology with Judith Plaskow will be published by Fortress Press in June 2016. Exploring the connections of theology and autobiography and alternatives to the transcendent, omnipotent male God.
feminismandreligion.com 
Gooseflesh reading the whole time. May Artemis rest in peace. It was a hard life. I hope people don’t judge her too harshly.
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Blessed Be to you Artemis your spirit is now released, now free ..thank you for sharing both of you
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No wonder your programme froze! Thank you Carol and may dear Artemis rest in peace …
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Yes Artemis had a very hard life. For me the key is to be able to acknowledge both her suffering and the suffering she caused. I did share this story with one of her sons and her daughter-in-law. My hope is that they will not “forgive and forget” what happened to them, but that they can also feel for Artemis. And most importantly that the cycle of bitterness can end, and those who have been harmed healed, so that the bitterness and suffering will not be passed on any longer.
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Thank you, Carol. Thank you, Artemis.
What a beautiful, authentic telling of Artemis’ story.
May you both be blessed and all the Artemis’s in the world.
Sonia
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It took me lots of years to see my own mother-in-law (long after her death) as someone who had experienced dislocation and pain throughout her life. (She died in her 50s.) Thank you for this tribute to Artemis. I easily substituted the name of my mother-in-law–Lillian.
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That is beautiful. I cried reading this. I have known Artemis many times. May her soul fly free and find peace.
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Carol, you’ve written many beauiful things, and many profound things, and many searching things…but this has to be one of the deepest and most heartfelt. Thank you. May Artemis finally fly free.
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It felt like a shamanistic experience.
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When you have time (I know: As if!) I hope you’ll explore that. More “Diving Deep and Surfacing” from your personal perspective?
I felt that element in what you wrote. Very real. Very connected. Very much right from your center: and therefore speaking right to the core experience of the rest of us. (NB: NOT “living in your head,” as your Greek friends might say, at all!)
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I truly felt like I had participated in the liberation of a soul and a history that otherwise would continue. I have had experiences like this with living people before, but not with the newly dead. I said to myself, I wouldn’t believe this happened, except that i cannot deny that something really weird happened with my computer.
I do not believe in reincarnation or eternal life, though I am not sure if the soul of person lingers for a while after death.
I interpret what happened primarily on the level of the fact and ways that the dead continue to impact the living. So whether I was healing Artemis herself or Artemis as she lives in me and in her sons and daughters-in-law, is not a question that I even care to upack, because for me the influence of the ancestors on the living had the most meaning for me. Arteims lives in me and in her sons, and I hope that the way she lives in us will be in a way that we can put her suffering to rest in our lives and not continue it on.
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The whole package here, an honest and beautiful tribute.
Artemis of the Golden Hands, creating a neighborhood refuge, wrathful in her punishments (Callisto, Orion, and Acteon knew this all too well).
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Golden hands is a metaphor in contemporary Greek for what the British call Green fingers. I don’t think US English has a word for it. I always felt there was something odd about The Clean Neighborhood, as if someone was setting herself above her dirty or filthy neighbors.
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We talk about a “green thumb.”
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yes of course, shows you how long I have been out of the country
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I join with the others in thanking you for this powerful story, Carol. It also makes me more inclined to try to understand and be compassionate with those I know here who are like Artemis.
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So poignant, so powerful. Thank you so much for sharing both the story of Artemis’s life and of your encounters with her before and after death. Blessed Be!
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What a touching story! I have a neighbor who lives across the street, who is 96 years old, and who is very feeble. When she fell a few nights ago and couldn’t get up and dial 9-1-1 for (she told me) two or three hours, a neighbor in this building saw the fireman trying to get into her house and came up and spoke with me. I went across the street immediately. The fireman had gotten in by then. My neighbor was back in her rocking chair. I spent some time with her. We do what we can. don’t we.
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So much understanding and truth in this article, thank you for sharing it. Especially what you say about being heard. I sometimes think there is no greater gift we can give another human being, than the gift of presence, of hearing. And the freezing of the computer……………….I’ve spent quite a few summers at Lilydale and Camp Chesterfield, studying with the spiritualist mediums, and truly, I’ve seen and experienced things that long ago took away my fear of death. When my own mother died recently, free at last from a painful 97 year old body, I found butterfly wings all over the house. Flying free………..
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Beautiful and deeply touching. Thank you.
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Thanks, Carol, an excellent and powerfully moving post, as always.
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Beautiful, Carol. Life and death are intertwined in ways we, who are mostly on this side of the divide, cannot understand. We don’t need to understand, but like you, the way I was raised pushes me in the direction of wanting to know. During my mother’s senescence, I’m needing to let go of knowing, and succeeding at least in part.
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Thanks, Carol.
I read this just after finishing the first class in my course on performing Jewish funeral rituals, for which I read a number of first-person stories by women who are part of a community that cleanses and prepares the bodies. A number of them described experiencing a shift in energy in the room, or a direct communication from the newly deceased person, as they did this work. An underlying belief is that the soul hovers around its former home for a while and is very aware of how it is being treated.
Re being heard: have you read Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence? It’s told from the point of view of an old woman who wants to be taken care of by her daughter-in law.
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Carol, I too was touched deeply by this post. Beautifully written! Zoe se sas
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Poor lady. I’m sure she was a handful, but she went through a lot in her life.
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