About halfway through a two-and-a-half-hour liturgy at St. Vartan’s Armenian Orthodox Cathedral on April 25, 2021, a giant curtain closed between the congregation and the altar. Staring at the cross embroidered on the curtain, my heart cried out, “Death is a veil!” In those same pews a few years earlier, I had sat with John Aroutiounian, a student I worked with while I was on faculty at Yale. John wanted to introduce me to his Armenian Orthodox heritage through the liturgy. Just a few years later, on May 3, 2019, days after he turned 26, my heart was torn apart when John died of cancer. Around 11 months later, on March 31, 2020, I collapsed in tears when I heard John’s father Aris died of COVID-19. Because of COVID, John’s family had to cancel plans to remember John on the first anniversary of his death. There was no public funeral for Aris in 2020. Thankfully, on April 26, around 10 family members and I visited the graves of John and Aris to pray for them. Bishop Daniel Findikyan, Primate of the Eastern Diocese of the Armenian Orthodox Church in America, led us in prayer. We burned incense, laid flowers on the grave, hugged each other and cried. Then, back at the home of Rouzan Karabakhtsian, Aris’s wife and John’s mother, we shared a banquet of Armenian food as we shared stories of John and Aris.
Death Is a Veil — and Love Is Eternal| National Catholic Register
Death Is a Veil — and Love Is Eternal| National Catholic Register
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