Nick Markogiannakis cannot describe with words what happened on Friday morning, 17 July. The son of Christos and Maria, he had the unfortunate fate of having both parents die within minutes of each other.
His mother, Maria, lived the final years of her life at the Thalpori Nursing Home in St Albans. Alongside her was husband Christos.
Once Maria’s seven year battle with Alzheimer deteriorated, she was put in the care of the nursing home in St Albans; the man she spent her whole life with, Christos didn’t want to leave her so he joined the nursing home too. In the darkness of seven years of Alzheimers, she would recognize only the clench of Christos’ arm.
They had spent their life together. On 17 July, in front of the Thalpori, the true Cretan levendis, his father’s son and his pappou’s grandson, wasn’t showing his emotions. After hearing the devastating news that Maria had died, he walked out for a cigarette. Everyone was waiting for his outburst. But tears were not coming – Christos was of the old generation of Cretan levendes who believed the men should not reveal their emotions. The more deep the pain, the more invisible the feelings were.
Not being able to hold Maria in his arms again, the only thing that was bothering him was not to leave her alone on the big trip she would never return from.
Only God knows how many prayers this serious and silent Cretan addressed to him on that morning. After seeing his son Nicholas, who had just arrived, Christos left his last breath there, only a few minutes after his beloved Maria, while her body was still warm. They said he died of a heart attack. In cold death certificates it hasn’t been recorded if people can die of love. He prayed for his heart to stop beating and it did.
“I ran, they had just phoned to me, five o’clock in the morning of Friday, from the Thalpori,” son Nicholas Makrogiannakis tells Neos Kosmos.
It was an eternal sleep, that would bring Christos back to his beloved Maria, the woman he adored his whole life. Leaving hand in hand as they always used to, it looked like Maria and Christos had blinked at the archangel of death, Charon. Their souls left together.