Susie Baum de Khoury: Closings and Introductions....

In this final excerpt, Susie Baum de Khoury remembers her father's last days and at the same time recounts the beginning of a momentous reconnection with the land in which she was born.

All questions in parentheses are mine. Mentioned frequently in this excerpt are Susie's sisters; Doris, Ruth, and Raquel "Kelly."
**************
(How does life continue for you?)

Well, we continued our life—we got married in the Episcopal Church. The reason we didn’t do it in the Greek Orthodox Church was because of two things. First of all, the services in the Greek Orthodox Church in Dallas, were all in Greek, and I really wanted to understand what was going on. I wanted to be able to bring up the children in a religion that they could understand or learn the language.. And second of all, John only had vacation in August. And in the Greek Orthodox Church they don’t marry in the month of August, something about the Virgin Mary. So they don’t have any weddings on that month. John was a foreign student with a full scholarship at SMU, and he had room and board with a family in Dallas, a very prominent family. So when she knew that we were looking for a church, she suggested that we could be married at the church they were members of called St. Michael’s and All Angels Episcopal Church, in Dallas.

And so we went and spoke with a priest and we found them to be so generous and such—a loving place, and so there’s where we got married, August 9th of 1969.

(When did you decide to come back here? I mean, tell me about your—the big chunk of your life in Dallas, your kids, once they were in high school or grown, were you seeing your parents more often?)

Yes, I was seeing my parents more often. Naturally, the war had come here, and I believe it was in 1978 or thereabouts that my sister Ruth and her family moved to Dallas. And my sister Raquel, whom we call Kelly, she had moved to Dallas before that. What year? Let’s see, in the 1970s some time, but before Ruth. So now I had two sisters living there. Ruth and Paul bought a house near us, about two blocks away from our home. So now, my parents, who were traveling nomads during the whole time of the war, between Guatemala , Germany, the States and Costa Rica, they would come to Dallas and spend a chunk of time. John and I even purchased a condo and my parents would stay in that condo. And they did so for twenty years.

(So they really came back and forth?)

They went back and forth, back and forth, until the situation here stabilized .Once my father started dialysis, he was not as mobile, so we were coming here. But I think the big turning point of our lives, maybe, was in, I think it was 1996. My father wanted to go on his last trip to Germany. He asked John’s permission for me to accompany them on this final journey to Fulda. By this time, John and my dad were best buddies, you know. Sometimes I would tell my dad, I would tease him, and I said, “I think you like John better than you like me. He’s more like your son than me.” But he asked John’s permission for me to go with them on this trip, just the three of us, that I would take care of them, be the chauffeur, be the baby sitter, be the whole thing. So we went for five or six weeks to Germany, just the three of us, and it was—it was absolutely the most amazing trip, in fact , I think it was closure. Finally, it gave us total closure.

(That was what year?)

I believe it was 1996.

(When did your father and mother become ill?)

Well, my mom was the one that was ill. I think, let’s see, my mom got ill maybe in 2000, where she needed a nurse. She had a nurse at home. My father had to undergo dialysis. I think he started dialysis around the year 2000, or maybe late 1999. But he was doing well. My Uncle Salli, his twin, had been on dialysis for quite a while. So we thought this is going to solve the problem, just being on dialysis. He was still strong. He was still doing Friday night sermons. He was still advising people on business matters and being an elder in the community. When he died—we all expected my mom to go first, because she was the one that was in the most delicate condition. My father’s death was unexpected, really, from an aneurism.

He died February 12th, 2001, a day before the second earthquake that hit El Salvador. (pause) And one important thing, or one—at least to me, because on the morning of January 13th of 2001, it was exactly 5:10 in the morning, I had a dream. I was sound asleep and I had a dream that my father was on the floor and that he had fallen and he was asking for help. So I passed by and I still remember that he stretched out his arms and said, “Help me get up.” So I pushed and pulled and propped him up, and then he put his arm around the back of my shoulders and we walked away together, telling me “Thank you.” I got up crying at 5:10 in the morning that day. I was screaming from the pain on my stomach, on the mouth of my stomach. John said, “What’s going on?” And I said, “I think I tore up my stomach trying to pick my dad up.” And he said, “You were dreaming. Your father is in El Salvador. That was just a dream.” I said, “No, it wasn’t.” I kept insisting that I had picked him up. And he said, no, it was a dream.

So he went and got me some medicine for my stomach. And so I said, “My goodness, I’ve never had such a vivid dream.” So he said, “Well, sometimes it happens.” At 11 o’clock that morning there was a massive earthquake in El Salvador. I didn’t know there was an earthquake. I received a phone call from El Salvador, from my dad around 11 something in the morning, that day, and he said, “Just wanted to tell you that we’re all right.” And it gets disconnected. I go, “What?” So I tried calling and calling and it kept saying, “All circuits to that country are busy.” Then we turn on the news, and they showed that there had been this massive earthquake. So then I told myself, “Well, maybe that’s why I had that dream, but my dad said that they were all right.”

So anyway, I had just been in El Salvador in November to visit my parents, and this was the—this was January, you know, the earthquake in January.. So, I was very upset the whole day, even though I had heard from my father and I was able to talk to them later on that night. He said, “Well, there was not much damage. There was little damage to the muro in the house and the tanque de agua and some other things.”

But that dream was still in the back of my mind. So about a week later, I told John, “You know what? I can’t stand it. Something is weird.” And so he said, “Well, you know, you should go home and maybe help your dad with some of these things that have come up.” So I came, and we did so many things with my dad, you know, arranging everything, fixing the house. There were some things at Ruthie’s house that were damaged, and we went and looked into that, because she was renting it.

And then my father, all of a sudden said, “You know, there are some things I really want to do that I haven’t done in a long time, like I haven’t been to the deportivo.” So I said, “OK, so let’s go.” So we went, and I remember, he said, “And you know what? I feel like having escargots with garlic.” And he had a whole dozen. I still remember that day! It was so sweet. He was enjoying it so much, eating the snails. And then he said, “I want to do this and I want—” He wanted to do all these things that he hadn’t done in a long time, and we did ‘em. I said, “Well, let’s go and do that.”

He had had dialysis on the 5th of February, which was their anniversary. So we were going to go out for dinner that night. He said, “You know what? I don’t feel good. Can we do it tomorrow, the 6th?” And I said, “Fine, because I’m leaving on the 7th.” And so we went on the 6th to El Bodegon and we had their anniversary dinner. Everything that he wanted to eat was for two, like the chateaubriand he wanted, and it was for two, so I said, “OK, I’ll have it with you.” I think the dessert was for two. Everything was for two, and we shared it. And then the—it’s hard. (near tears) (pause) (crying)…

The next morning at 5 in the morning he got up, because I was leaving on the early flight, and usually he would never get up. I would always go and say good-bye at his bedside. And he got up. He was wearing his little pin-stripe housecoat, bathrobe. And he sat with me while I had breakfast. I said, “You want to eat something?” And he went, “No, don’t feel like it, but I wanted to keep you company.” I said, “Oh, that’s sweet, but you didn’t have to get up.” So he said, “I want to give you a blessing before you leave.” So he took a handkerchief out of his pocket and he put it on his head and he gave me his blessing. (crying) And he said, “If something happens to me, be sure you take care of your mom.” I said, “Nothing is going to happen to you. Nothing is ever going to happen to you. You’re all right. But sure, I’ll take care of Mom.”

I left on Thursday, and he got sick Saturday night. He was in pain the whole day. Sunday they took him to the hospital, and Ruth was on her way down here.. My father went into a coma before she got here. When she got here and she talked to the doctors, they said he was really gone, he was on life support, so to please inform the other sisters to come. So we all came on Monday and he was already in a coma. It was the hardest thing. My sisters and I had to go and look for a coffin, while Doris went and did the write-ups for the newspapers. Then we had to give the order that you had to disconnect. The doctor said it was going to take a long time because he had been given so much medicine, so it would take something like eight hours, which I thought was a lot. But then, I don’t know very much about medicine.

So, being that Ruth had arrived the day before and she had been doing things, and my mom was sitting there, she was not aware of what was going on. She thought my dad was just sick, that he was going to get better. She didn’t know how dire the situation was.. And Kelly, who’s diabetic, she had to go back and get her medicines. It was about 5:30 in the evening, and I said, “Why don’t you all go back and take a shower and have dinner and then come back here, and then I’ll go and do the same. Right now I’m not hungry.” So I stayed there, and after everybody had left, it must not have been more than half an hour, my dad passed away. I was there, and my cousin Rafael was there with me, and Lorena Hirst was there. The three of us, that’s it. All I remember were the bells and the alarms on the machines, and the doctor coming and closing his eyes.

So I called them. They were barely sitting down to have dinner, and then they all came back. But he was gone.—The doctor explained to us that an abdominal aneurism was what had burst. And there’s where I had had the pain in my dream. It was an unbelievable realization!.

And then I started sharing with my sister Ruth the six months out of the year being with my mom, taking care of my mom. At the beginning, after my dad passed away, I stayed for a month and we got the visas for the nurse worked out so she could go for three months to the States to take care of my mom. We had my mother staying with us and with Ruthie in our homes, being that they were two blocks apart. And we did this twice, but then it got very hard with the nurses and with my mom. She had her doctors here, and taking a nurse to the States for three months was pretty difficult.. So we decided that we would take turns taking care of my mom here in El Salvador. So I did that for two years.

While being here, I kind of got acquainted or reached out to my roots again and loved El Salvador. John loved El Salvador too. He’s been coming here on business for—over twenty years, or even before that. He’s in aviation. So we saw this lot up on the volcano and we just fell in love with the view and the climate and the tranquility, and I found peace.

Transcript by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC.