I am Theon Greyjoy

There has to be a way back, right? What else could “what is dead may never die…” mean, if not that?

(Warning: For those of you who care about this sort of thing and haven’t seen Game of Thrones before, there are some minor spoilers ahead.)

Recently rewatching Game of Thrones, I found myself particularly focused on the story of Theon Greyjoy. Taken from his father after a failed rebellion, Theon was fostered by (or, depending on one’s perspective, the hostage of) House Stark. He didn’t seem to mind the situation — he was treated very well, arguably much better than he would amongst his family on the Iron Islands. After all, the Ironborn are kind of a poor man’s version of the Vikings — they take the sea a bit too seriously and are determined to mostly rape and pillage their way to supremacy …(something they never quite achieve).

The Ironborn have some interesting customs. They have “salt wives”, which are glorified concubines, “rock wives”, which are just what a normal person would call their spouse, their leaders are only truly crowned if they survive being forcibly drowned, and their dead are floated out to sea in what looks like a big wooden commercial lobster trap. They’re an unusual bunch. But my fascination really only starts there. I’m much more interested in their commonly used turn of phrase: “What is dead may never die…” It’s obviously a reference to the aforementioned drowning ritual, but I suspect there’s much more to it that’s worth exploring, which requires examining a bit more about Theon himself and his…uhhhh…”journey”. For brevity’s sake, I will lightly summarize.

Thanks to some poor decisions and an infected heart, a future once possible now goes unwritten. A life broken down and beaten into the ground. Why would anyone call that “living”? Many of us — if not most — go through an experience like this at some point in our lives.

Acting as special envoy on behalf of House Stark, he visits his family and homeland and renounces the idyllic existence he had with his guardians/kidnappers. So far, not so bad, right? He is convinced by his family to execute a strong-arm invasion of the Stark’s homestead, Winterfell. He and his forces don’t hold it very long as he is eventually held captive, tortured to an extent that would even make Dick Cheney squirm, convinced he’s really a thing called “Reek”, and is forcibly turned into a castrato…minus the beautiful singing voice. Suffice to say, things went downhill for him.

While Theon might be an extreme example, we the living are no strangers to such adversity. You know, the kind that doesn’t actually kill you dead but kills you in other ways, rendering one what I’ll refer to as “effectively dead”. You’re effectively dead when you’ve had so much taken from you that you begin to question why you are still technically alive. I know, I’ve been there. The expectation that your life is going to take a certain direction and the deprival of such due to forces stronger than oneself. I had a partner once, a woman whom I adored and a love I was ultimately deprived of. Thanks to some poor decisions and an infected heart, a future once possible now goes unwritten. A life broken down and beaten into the ground. Why would anyone call that “living”? Many of us — if not most — go through an experience like this at some point in our lives.

There has to be a way back, right? What else could “what is dead may never die…” mean, if not that?

Though it takes him quite awhile, Theon finds a way back. Life presents him with new choices to make and new reasons to live. He starts acting on those choices, starts finding reasons to be Theon Greyjoy again. I see quite a bit of myself in him, now that I think about it. I have held myself captive and I have tortured myself, if not physically, I have done so in just about every other way imaginable. I never lost an appendage much less THAT appendage, but I have lost enough. For far too long I went about being anything but John Palmucci. But as I said before, there has to be a way back, right?

It bears mentioning that “what is dead may never die…” is not the full saying but only the first part. It is actually “What is dead may never die, but rises again harder and stronger.”

Theon found a way to rise again and so too did I. There’s exists a possibility that we “die” many times over before we finally do in the literal and inescapable sense of the word. I don’t think we should define ourselves by these “deaths” we experience along the the way. The truly lived life is earned — and in large part defined — through the learning to rise again.