I choose not to commemorate Remembrance Day, a decision that might seem controversial to some. My reluctance doesn't stem from a lack of respect for sacrifice – indeed, as a lapsed Christian (with a spiritual sprinkle of Buddhism and Sufism), the notion of sacrifice is deeply ingrained in my ethos. However, I see Remembrance Day as a narrative deeply rooted in imperial and colonial viewpoints, often overlooking the multitude of voices and losses on the other sides of conflicts.
This day, in my view, fails to acknowledge the tragedies like the 1915 Armenian Genocide, where 1.5 million Armenians, including my ancestors, suffered and perished due to disease, starvation, and violence. It feels like a part of my history is consistently overlooked and excluded, a narrative overshadowed by the dominant stories of white Europe. The horrors inflicted on my ancestors could only happen because the world was at war and too busy to look or care. For me, Remembrance Day is the poster child of the right/wrong, good/evil binaries and propaganda that continue to create harm and precariousness. I do miss my kids singing about peace and harmony in concerts, though.
I think my shift happened once I read the provocative Hiroshima in the Morning, a book that not only made me reflect deeply on motherhood but also shed light on the catastrophic aftermath of the atomic bombings — an event often justified as a necessary end to World War II. It was the first time I’d considered the Japanese families whose lives were abruptly ended —the poor moms, dads, and kids, incinerated while having an otherwise ordinary breakfast. Collateral damage, we shrug, as though it’s a simple side effect of a drug that makes people better. It's this labelling, this passive acceptance of immense human suffering, that troubles me.
And the media doesn’t help. This summer’s blockbuster movie, Oppenheimer, had me feeling a complicated sympathy for a brilliant white man who designed the very bombs that resulted in that destruction and intergenerational trauma. These kinds of movies and stories raise critical questions for me: Whose stories get told — are we choosing to tell — and who benefits or suffers from these narratives?
Building on this, we’ve learned in recent years that Canada has been involved in a lot of incredibly disgusting things after the First World War — particularly to Indigenous people. The story that we are peacekeepers, that we are “Canada the Good,” feels like another marketing scheme, another tale told on repeat to help us feel better about the world that men designed. A version that insists on needing murder weapons to stay safe and propagates the idea that we are barbaric and savage if left unchecked. These narratives fail to acknowledge that once our basic survival needs are met, we are practically domesticated kittens, sleepily awaiting a scratch behind the ears and our next meal. That when we are not in survival mode, we are actually programmed for peace.
The dramatized version of one of my favourite books, All the Light We Cannot See, is now on Netflix, and I can’t bring myself to watch it for fear it will ruin what that book meant to my heart. Reading it opened my eyes to the possibility that many of those who fought for Nazi Germany were young boys who had no little to no choice in the matter and little clue what they were fighting for. War is what awakes the savage in us. Survival. Desperation. I think of the Turkish soldier who, in a moment of remorse, perhaps, let my great-grandmother and baby grandmother run away from their slaughter. I think of the Turks who watched their Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek neighbours get rounded up from their villages and homes. I imagine they made excuses for why it was OK so they didn’t have to feel so helpless or conflicted about it when they went safely to their beds at night.
This doesn’t excuse the unimaginable actions and events and harm caused by those people and their actions, but it gives me a human lens to prepare for what may come. The Armenian Genocide has always clarified my view of terrible things. When you grow up knowing how easy it is for a governing power to turn on a certain segment of people — on citizens with marginalized identities, for example — and how your otherwise lovely neighbours will likely fall in line like dominoes to protect whatever foothold and illusion of safety they have… well, it creates a sort of hypervigilance around world events.
The truth is that none of us is better than the other when it comes to our survival. We quickly draw circles around identities that suit us in the moment. We choose the ones that give us the most power, safety, pleasure, joy, wealth, and community in that environment or circumstance: Armenian or Canadian, mother or employee, Queer or straight, woman or man or other, a Leafs fan or a Habs fan, Ed Sheeran lover or Ed Sheeran hater, Leslieville or Parkdale, rich or poor, Conservative or Liberal (or NDP, if they didn’t do Sarah Jama like that). Like borders that get redrawn on a map, we subconsciously choose which side of the line we stand on by who we think is holding what we need or hiding what may harm us. The truth is that the lines are often drawn for us, whether we are conscious of it or not.
I was texting with an old friend and colleague the other day, a hijabi Muslim editor and mother, who expressed that lately she’s been looking over her shoulder in the Costco parking lot for the first time. Meanwhile, anti-Semitic swastikas are being painted on homes and sacred spaces, leaving my Jewish friends afraid and uneasy. The mom of the Syrian-Armenian refugee family I am now a big sister to — still reeling from her own escape from war — worries about her in-laws in Aleppo, still digging themselves out from post-earthquake rubble. Her struggle to gain footing in an ever-expensive Canada is now doubly accentuated by sleepless nights, once again fearing bombs dropping on her extended family, barely surviving in tumultuous Lebanon. None of us is “winning” in times of war. No one is finding easy peace in all of this.
In an attempt to find levity in the darkness, I joke to friends that women would have solved these conflicts with potlucks, book clubs, and power walks. I’d like to believe that it’s that simple, and yet we raise, sleep next to, and work for the men who continue to uphold this unbearable version of the world. I can’t reconcile this fact in my mind, can’t quite make sense of my role in it all, so I turn to the beauty I find in “mother energy” for respite. I observe the fall maples let go of old leaves as the squirrels frantically hide nuts between the outdoor cushions I have yet to put away. I ask friends to share food, books, and stories; to please keep me company on power walks. These simple acts of nurturing and togetherness bring warmth to what is otherwise unbearable.
I hug my children and kiss their cheeks, now caked with concealer or beard. I visit my parents dutifully but lovingly each week. We munch on neon yellow hummus and patiently let my mother offer us well-meaning but annoying advice like how you should add turmeric to everything (hence the hummus colour) and how “You don’t even taste it.” Her repeated insistence that we go to bed early so we can be our best. As though none of us lays awake at night ruminating on our existence.
A few nights a week, I fall asleep in the arms of a man who can’t seem to let go of this version of the world but finds joy in watching my fingers move across a keyboard, as though I’m a virtuoso seated at a Baby Grand. We find solace in sharing laughter, both quick-witted and sardonic. There’s giggly delight in sharing one’s quirks with another, without fear of judgement — how we both chew our food with much enthusiasm and talk too loudly, how I am a tornado at times, how he prefers naps over most things. We laugh about how different our TikTok “For You” pages are (me: Coaching, therapy, affirmations, tarot readings; Him: Geo-political and journalistic discourse, with a side of Love is Blind memes.) We relish in moments of pleasure, in soft skin, hungry limbs and mouths intertwined, like otters who — untethered to one another — would otherwise float away.
And yet, as I watch the changes in the trees, I try to remember it’s all a cycle, a pendulum swing. With every crunch of maple leaf underfoot, I’m reminded that if I let go of how I think it all should be, perhaps, dear reader, we will once again see hopeful green shoots spring forth from the seemingly lifeless winter ground. I remember the power of faith and the collective. I reconnect with the richness of the soil I get to stand on, fertilized by ancestors who quietly beg us to stay in the now and trust the process. Maybe, with a little patience, faith, hope, and care, we will see our own nature sort itself out.
Yesterday, I did an exercise in shining your flashlight inward. My morning writing class began with the prompt: “I want to be remembered as/by/for,” and I’d love it if you’d take a moment to set a timer (15-20 will do) to play with this. Here’s the unfiltered, unedited version of what came to me.
I want to be remembered for/by/as
I want to be remembered as the woman who lit up a room;
Who walked in and flashed a huge grin and put everyone at ease.
I want to be remembered as the woman who could hold a gaze, hold your attention, hold your hand, hold space.
As the woman who cried your tears with you and then made it all better with a joke or a hug.
I want to be remembered as someone who helped people feel at home when they were far away from theirs,
As the woman who would generously share her stories of failure, missteps and loss so that you might feel less badly about yours.
I want to be remembered as the mom who worked so hard to give her children a better, softer life than the one she had.
I want to be remembered for making Halloween costumes, lunch box poetry, and haphazard dinners with no recipe, but that tasted like love anyway.
I want to be remembered for being a spark, for dancing on tables, and occasionally flashing you with a nip slip.
I want to be remembered for giving a shit, for making communities out of one small interaction, for helping those who were beyond able to help themselves.
I want to be remembered as the woman who was always writing, whose fingers danced across the keyboard, whose pen twirled on the page.
“Let’s sit crooked and talk straight,” the Armenian saying goes. I want to be remembered because when we talked, I left you thinking deeply about something in a way you may not have considered, or perhaps with a hint of self-acceptance you did not bestow before.
I want to be remembered because I helped you love yourself a bit more. I helped you be kinder to the hurt within yourself first and then the wounded child within others.
I want to be remembered as someone who knew pain and sorrow and loss but somehow found the spell to transform heartache into beauty.
I want to be remembered by those whose day I made by hollering, “Nice dress!” while zipping by on my bike, Donna Summer.
I want to be remembered by those who read something I wrote and felt a little less like an asshole that day and then tended to their own ouchie bits.
I want to be remembered by those who danced with me, who laughed on a Zoom call with me or took me up on my offers for coffee walks.
“Our table is small, but our hearts are wide,” says the Armenian proverb. I want to be remembered as someone who opened the doors to her home to others gleefully and somewhat fretfully, a whirling Dervish in a storm of bodies, dishes, and smells, desperate to make it special.
I want to be remembered for creating and nurturing family, for tending to hearts, for bringing the joy and the laughter to the darkest times.
I want to be remembered for all I was able to give and share because that has made me rich.