Chapter 48

Day eight

Sunday morning Liana and her husband picked us up after we enjoyed our last breakfast and thanked our hosts at the desk. Kirim drove his big BMW SUV in race-car-driver style through the downtown streets of Tbilisi. I smiled imagining Roma enjoying the ride in the front seat instead of Bruce. Liana set in the back with me. We smiled and occasionally squeezed each other’s hand. For the first time on our trip, we were without a translator. I wondered what she must really think of us, this old American couple, born a decade earlier than her own parents, who her beloved little brother had known as “Mom” and “Dad.” I think she recognized how dearly we cherished Roma. I prayed that knowledge helped heal her loss. In the early days of 2015, soon after I found her and she had time to study all the photos I shared of the years she had missed of Roma’s life, she told me she could tell Roma loved me, that I had been a good mother to him. His consistently happy face had revealed to her that he had lived a happy and loved life. How I wished she could have been reunited with him.

After Roma’s early promotion to Heaven, Lia had asked if we would consider sending some of his ashes to his family to be buried in the family cemetery plot. That was an easy decision. We kept some, and sent some to them. With Roma it seemed appropriate.

As usual, this last morning we didn’t know where we were heading. We left the city and continued to a more rural landscape. We stopped at a roadside stand that sold flowers. Liana got out and bought a couple of bouquets. Then the black BMW began to ascend a hill, and it became apparent we were entering a cemetery. The flowers Liana purchased were for the grave sites of her father and brother. Before we parked, I could see my son’s image on a stone. I bit my lips trying to defend against the assault of tears. I knew about this stone marker. It was not the surprise that it felt like now, seeing it among other “dead” relatives.

Lia had sent me photos of this marker that now greeted us as Liana and I led the climb up the steep hill. I lost the battle with my tears. There was Igor, and Roman, Igor’s father, Roma’s grandfather. I was touched when I saw Roma’s memorial realizing Lia had thought of things I might have neglected. She had Roma’s memorial marker engraved with his Georgian name and also his American name in English. I was moved by her love of this boy who they would knew mostly through my stories of him.

After our emotional visit to the cemetery, we met up with Elena, Tako, and Liana’s boys. We traveled on to a lovely park where Sunday strollers enjoyed a slower pace of life with friends and family. We rented paddle boats for a sail around Turtle Lake enclosed in the park. Hours later, just after midnight we would board our plane, and tomorrow we would be on two planes for a total of seventeen hours travel time and back to the rush of life and the certainty of jet lag. But on this last day in Georgia, we could stroll arm in arm with our family with whom our next visit might be in Heaven.

Then we went for the first time to Lia’s warm and welcoming home. Her mother and aunt who we met at Georgio’s ranch on our first night were busy in the kitchen preparing another feast. We even got to meet Lia’s cat, Toby, who shares a name with our seventh grandchild. According to Elene, Lia loves her Toby as much as we love ours. After fun family time, Lia carefully pulled a cherished treasure from a cabinet and laid it before me.

Igor, while in prison, had drawn this with ball-point pen on a torn bed sheet, the edges carefully frayed with love. It was a gift for Lia’s birthday. I had seen the photo, but as she laid it in my hands, I felt I should be wearing museum gloves. And no other talent could have been such a common denominator as his gift of drawing. My daughters and I are all artists.

On this trip, I met so many people who I love without bounds. I struggle with insufficient words to describe the depth of our bond. But I have also become more acquainted with Igor. While in Kazbegi, I paid close attention to the homeland to which he fled, where he longed to bring his young family. Standing in the rutted ancient dirt lanes away from the main roads, I could imagine it now, a graduation party at a neighbor’s, a fight over hostile nationalities, an impulsive gun shot in the black night in an archaic hamlet that ended a life of a teenager, and all of Igor’s hopes and dreams.

We form mental pictures without realizing it, and they are always flawed. The circumstances of a night that eventually rendered Roma our son, and the little village where the Sudzhashvili family originated was clearer to me. Through a glass darkly, I had visualized so many inaccurate images. Now I saw face to face. Gentle Igor loved and was loved by his family. He mourned for his new baby, Roma, born after his incarceration. I have often imagined that his desperate pleas for divine help from prison set off a chain of cosmic reactions that struck me like a lightning bolt in March of 2000 while I sat at my kitchen table, minding my own selfish business. Unworthy and undeserving me. I didn’t merit any part in this beautiful, sacred story, but God is merciful and loving and glorious and gracious. He understands my need, and the need of all the characters in our story.

In the thin and clear air of Georgia, I sensed a constant whisper, like a sacred echo, “Come in and know me better,” a quote by the Ghost of Christmas Present from a favorite Charles Dickens’ book, A Christmas Carol. At first I thought the persistent voice was Igor. Later I recognized it had been God all along.

What a merciful act by a most loving Father. I may never know why God came after me in such a dramatic way in 2000 to offer me His boy, Roma. Oh, how I tried to turn down that extravagant Gift. My heart is overwhelmed by gratitude that God refused to accept my stubborn “NO” to His lavish offer. God slipped into my unsuspecting heart along with dear, sweet Roma. On our trip to Georgia, He would tie up loose ends for all who love Roma, and redeem our grief. I was euphoric. Our boy Roma is fine, better than fine. Now we are fine too. The veil is thin and the separation is only for a little while. I am so grateful for that assurance.

“I cannot now soar with wings like the eagle. But I inch along the dusty road in company with the King. It is a treacherous road, painful to my feet, but He makes my heart burn within me. I find Him to be God of the valleys, and this oppressive circumstance is an exquisite place because of His presence.”
~James Means, A Tearful Celebration

The finale, Chapter 49