We Are All Armenian

“It is estimated that one and a half million Armenians perished between 1915 and 1923. There were an estimated two million Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire on the eve of W.W.I. Well over a million were deported in 1915. Hundreds of thousands were butchered outright. Many others died of starvation, exhaustion, and epidemics which ravaged the concentration camps. Among the Armenians living along the periphery of the Ottoman Empire many at first escaped the fate of their countrymen in the central provinces of Turkey. Tens of thousands in the east fled to the Russian border to lead a precarious existence as refugees. The majority of the Armenians in Constantinople, the capital city, were spared deportation. In 1918, however, the Young Turk regime took the war into the Caucasus, where approximately 1,800,000 Armenians lived under Russian dominion. Ottoman forces advancing through East Armenia and Azerbaijan here too engaged in systematic massacres. The expulsions and massacres carried by the Nationalist Turks between 1920 and 1922 added tens of thousands of more victims. By 1923 the entire landmass of Asia Minor and historic West Armenia had been expunged of its Armenian population. The destruction of the Armenian communities in this part of the world was total.”
http://www.armenian-genocide.org/genocidefaq.html

Every July, for as long as I can remember, my Grandma Trent has celebrated my mom’s (her daughter-in-law’s) birthday with shish kabob, flat bread, pilaf and salad.
My Grandma Trent’s maiden name was Mezigian. She is Armenian.
Almost a century ago, my great grandfather fled Armenian with his one surviving brother after the massacre of his entire family. They were young men, almost boys, when they ran for their lives and finally found their way here, to America. Settling in Delray they established lives, raised families, and told the stories. Stories of the Old Country, of Armenia. Stories of the people, the mother and father and siblings that didn’t make it out. Stories of tradition and love and hardship.
Stories to remind themselves and their children that they, and we, are Armenian.
Four generations later, we are still Armenian.
Why do we do it? Why do we still gather over the old fashioned and traditional foods? Why do we still call ourselves Armenian when it’s only now a small percentage of our ethnicity?
Why do we choose my mom’s birthday, she who is not Armenian, to raise the banner of our history?
We do it to honor and to celebrate. We do it to be grateful and to recognize the price paid for the feast in front of us. There isn’t much we can do anymore, with so many of the previous generation gone. We can’t thank them for their courage. But we can take one meal every year to make the price they paid worth it.
And to remember, we are Armenian.
There were twelve of us for dinner today. Exactly half of us can claim some part of our blood is still Armenian. The rest were in-laws and friends.
But that’s ok. Because we not only honor those gone from this earth and those we never met, we honor God and thank Him for this great bounty.
For the determination of one young man used by God to start a new life. We don’t want to forget where we came from and where we could’ve been but for the mercy of Christ and the hand of God.
Today we once again ate shish kabob, pilaf, flat bread and salad. We celebrated my mom’s birthday and realized that it could’ve all been so much different.
Today in-laws and friends and blue-eyed blonds remembered and celebrated and recognized our great bounty.
Today, we were all Armenian.
And we are all blessed.
And we are all grateful.




Jeremiah 39:18
I will save you; you will not fall by the sword but will escape with your life, because you trust in me, declares the LORD.' "