Married to His Motorcycle: My Brother’s Sudden Loss

By Harikleia Sirmans

Orthodox Easter had always been a joyful day for my family in Greece, roasting lambs, cracking red eggs, drinking wine, and dancing. But Easter in April 2012 was tragic. I was shopping at Sally’s in Georgia, where I’d made my home since 2000, when my cell phone rang with news that would bridge the 5,500 miles between my two worlds.

It was my husband asking me to meet him at our house. “What is it?” I asked.

“Just come home and I’ll tell you,” he insisted.

Why can’t he tell me over the phone? I just got to town, now I must turn around and drive home, I thought.

When I arrived, my husband had left work to meet me. My mother-in-law was there too, signaling that something wasn’t right.

“Hi, sweety. Come sit down.”

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Something happened,” my husband said gently. “Your sister Giota called. She had bad news about Michalis. He was in a motorcycle accident. He didn’t make it. I’m so sorry!”

My brother was killed? That’s not possible, I thought.

The next three days passed in a blur of disbelief and frantic preparations. While my family in Greece had already begun mourning, I was suspended in a strange limbo, grieving alone across the ocean, piecing together bits of what had happened through brief phone calls.

When I finally called home, my cousin Zoe answered the phone, explaining that my parents were buried in too much sorrow to come to the phone. She said that the doctor was tending to my mom whose blood pressure had skyrocketed. She explained briefly that Michalis and his friends had ridden their motorcycles to the city for an afternoon coffee the day after Easter on 16 April 2012. On the way back, a stray dog darted in the middle of the highway. When Michalis swerved to avoid it, his motorcycle struck a rock, flipped, and crashed his chest. The guests at a nearby restaurant heard the crash and called an ambulance. A paramedic tried to save him with oxygen, but it was too late. Michalis was already gone. His beautiful soul floated in the air like blossoms in the wind.

My husband and I began arranging flights to Greece. A compassionate travel agent offered a cheaper bereavement fare. We had visited my family one year earlier and didn’t expect to return so soon, under such circumstances. The day before our departure, I packed in a daze-- black clothes that I never imagined wearing for this. My grief had been confined to a distance for a long time, but this was likely to change.

We landed in Athens three days after Michalis’s funeral. When I spotted my dad waiting at the airport, reality crashed over me. Grief was written over his face. With tears in his eyes, Dad hugged us both and simply said, “Michalis is gone.” These three words sounded different in person than over the phone. My brother was gone and buried, and I didn’t have the chance to say goodbye.

During the ride home from the airport, Dad poured out his grief to the taxi driver and us, recounting fragmented details of his son’s accident. From the back seat, I heard traces of his pain.

“If he had let the motorcycle go, he would have been alive today. But he held on to it…” Dad’s voice quivered. “He loved that Yamaha. That motorcycle was his bride. He cleaned it and polished it all the time… Why couldn’t he have a coffee at home? That dog appeared out of nowhere... He sold my truck, and I never saw a cent… He made the wrong decisions. He wouldn’t listen to me… Lately, he seemed skeptical. Something was bothering him, and he wouldn’t tell me what…”  

As Dad continued his lament, I tried to visualize the accident I hadn’t witnessed. What went through Michalis’s mind at that horrible moment?

***

Our house was quiet when we arrived. My mother, whom I hadn’t seen yet, was resting in her bedroom, exhausted from grief and little sleep. That afternoon, sitting around the kitchen table with Giota, I finally heard the whole story of those first terrible hours after the accident.

“After the accident,” Giota recounted, “our cousin drove Dad and me to the hospital. Mom stayed home. We met with the doctor.” She described how bluntly the doctor announced, “Your son is dead!” And when Dad asked in disbelief, the doctor repeated the same crushing words. “Dad’s jaw dropped open,” Giota continued. “He turned around, dropped his head, stared at the marbled hospital floor, and walked out. I followed him. Neither of us could speak.”

Giota also told me that they saw Maria, Michalis’s girlfriend, walking in the hallway of the hospital. Maria had rushed there as soon as she heard. After the doctor delivered the bad news to her, he handed her Michalis’s motorcycle uniform and a small bag with his belongings: keys, wallet, cell phone, passport. I imagine her clutching those things, as if holding on to Michalis.

At the hospital parking lot, Giota called Zoe and asked her to tell mom. Zoe hesitated, unsure how to break the news, until Giota pressed that there was no one else to do it. With a heavy heart, Zoe rushed to the house. Mom was restlessly pacing at the front porch. The moment she spotted Zoe rushing toward her, she instinctively knew the truth. Zoe was the bearer of unwelcome news about her son.

The days after the accident were agonizing. The medical examiner took two days to perform Michalis’s autopsy because he was also handling the tragic death of a young girl killed in the same day. The local newspaper featured both deaths, Dad told me.

Only then did I understand what my family had endured while I was still boarding planes and crossing oceans: the shock of that first night, the two-day wait for the autopsy, and the funeral I missed.

For Mom, those two days felt like an eternity of agony and grief. Denial and despair consumed her. One moment, she was dazed in fog. The next, she screamed, “It’s not fair,” over and over, her eyes swollen with tears. During the day, she somewhat managed to numb her pain by keeping busy with house chores and tending to endless visitors. While these distractions kept her from thinking about the accident, they also annoyed her, as all she wanted was to isolate herself. Alone in bed at night, she held Michalis’s picture as she slept.

Giota said that over 300 people attended the funeral. Maria stood near the front, her eyes swollen from crying. The funeral home dressed Michalis in a gray suit, white shirt, and tie. Mom leaned over Michalis’s coffin lamenting, “Even in your coffin, you are so beautiful. You look like a groom!” She wept, “Why did you do this to me? You stabbed my heart with a knife. Me. God, take me instead, the old woman.”

At the cemetery, Mom was so overwhelmed with grief that she collapsed on Michalis’s freshly dug grave and would not let go until Dad pulled her away. Soon, depression began squeezing life out of her. Her soul was as dark as her mourning clothes. Giota brought a young therapist to help Mom. The therapist was friendly and prescribed antidepressants. However, after a couple of sessions, Mom didn't want to see her any longer.            

“She asks me questions about Michalis! She makes me remember!” she complained.

“That’s her job,” Giota said. “She wants you to talk about your pain.”

Giota, an emotionally strong woman, sympathized but needed to move forward. Living in a house full of grief and misery every day was overwhelming. “You’re not the only one who has lost a child,” she said to Mom.

“I know,” Mom bolstered, “but everyone deals with her own pain.”

“You have a husband and two other children who need you,” Giota said frustrated.  

***

Michalis was a responsible motorcycle driver. He always wore protective gear, including a helmet and a uniform that my husband and I gave him. When Maria kept this uniform, Mom wanted it back.

“You and Giota go to Maria’s house and get it,” Mom demanded.   

“I’m not going to her house,” I said.

“Then call her,” Mom insisted.

Reluctantly, I dialed Maria. “I’d like Michalis’s uniform back,” I said.

“What will you do with his uniform? Wear it to the motorcycle races?” She sneered.

“And what will you do with it?” I shot back. “I brought it to him.”

“Michalis was my husband. The uniform’s mine.” Her voice shook for a moment, before she hung up.

“I wish her death!” Mom cursed, her anger boiling over.

I wonder if holding onto the uniform was Maria’s way of keeping Michalis close. Maybe her anger on the phone was just another form of grief. We were all broken in different ways.

***

Michalis lived with Maria and her three children from a previous marriage in her two-story house. Though not legally married, they lived together for over a decade. Michalis loved Maria and raised her children as his own. But Maria was controlling, a manipulator as I remember from high school. She always flirted with other men, craved attention, bullied me and other students, used foul language, and hung around with like-minded women. Her influence over Michalis was overwhelming. She had wrapped her tentacles around him so tightly that over time, she drained him of his love, his laughter, and his money. Michalis, blinded by his love, handed over every cent he earned, trusting her completely. I never understood why Maria treated my brother this way. As a single mother with three children, perhaps, she felt pressure to protect her family and secure a stable future for them. Or perhaps, she worried that her relationship with Michalis might not last long. So, she hung on to any emotional and financial security my brother offered her.

Maria’s house stood next to Dad’s auto garage, where Michalis worked. He and Dad often argued about how things should be done in the garage. Michalis had his own ideas about running the business and didn’t agree with the way Dad did things. No matter how much Dad tried to advise him, Michalis wouldn’t listen. He felt trapped and yearned for an escape. At 18, he left for military service, where he became a parachuter. “It was an awesome experience,” he once told me, sharing pictures of him jumping off a plane. My favorite was from his military graduation, standing tall in his olive-green uniform with a matching beret that hid most of his dark curly hair. He was smiling, holding his diploma in one hand and shaking the general’s hand with the other.

The general liked Michalis and offered him a job in the army, but he declined.

“What? I don’t want to be a soldier all my life!” he said.

“We are all soldiers in this life!” Dad replied, encouraging him to take the job.

After the military, Michalis tried his luck in Germany with our cousin, an electrician. After two years, Michalis returned to Greece unhappy. He then considered joining me in the United States, but visa issues blocked his path. Later, a family friend offered him a job in shipping, transporting goods to England and Greece. Without a second thought, Michalis began preparing his passport. While waiting for his passport to arrive, the motorcycle accident stole his chance. Obviously, God had other plans for him. He took him to Heaven at the age of 42.

***

Michalis’s friends built an iconostasi at the crash site, a road shrine, where his spirit lingers. My parents avoid that road. They do not want to remember that horrible day when they lost their son to a stray dog. Yet, in that small shrine, Michalis’s love lives on.

Though time has soothed our hearts, the scars remain. I miss Michalis deeply, but life goes on. When I remember him, I realize that he is not coming back. I blink away tears in my eyes, and I carry on with my day.

• Photo is Dad and Michalis on Orthodox Easter Day.

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