ABSTRACT
The two years after her return from Soviet Armenia were the closest Mary Zakarian ever had to an idyllic period in her life. Mary dedicated the exhibition to the memory of her mother. Her crowning achievement was a painting she called My Mother's Endless Lament: five heads of her mother painted in stark tones on one canvas, depicting despair, anguish, resignation, emblematic of the fact that a survivor of genocide is trapped in a perpetual cycle of suffering which continues long after the bloodshed has ended. And Mary's success was beyond what she had thought possible. The Armenian community finally gave her the recognition she had known she deserved, finally told the outcast that she was one of them. Yet even with this consummation of her hopes, she still sensed that the sorrow of her former life had not been put to rest, but would haunt her again, if she did not have the courage to suppress it.
