23 Oct I wasn’t there

You’re having lunch with one of your new international friends, or you’re just doing your homework at the library, when your phone starts ringing. Wait, why is someone from back home calling me? Isn’t it like midnight over there? Sudden phone calls like that will definitely make you think of the worst case scenario. Most times it’s not that bad, but sometimes it’s even worse.

During my second week in San Francisco I got a phone call from my mom that one of our closest relatives had passed away. The poor man was 80 years old and very sick, but he had helped my mom and I a lot in the past. Back then the Dutch government denied our citizenship request, so we were forced to live in tents, trailers and wooden huts for years. My mom was not allowed to work, so we had no money and no real roof over our heads. This amazing man, who was a reverend, asked the church to collect money for us. He helped us survive until, eight years later, the government allowed us to stay. Without him I probably wouldn’t even had the chance to come to San Francisco. My mom went to the funeral and was able to say goodbye, but I wasn’t there.

One week ago my mom started spamming me on Skype. She was pretty mad at me, because we hadn’t been able to Skype for about three weeks. But the moment I saw her face on my screen I knew why she was pushing so hard: something was wrong. At first she didn’t want to tell me anything, but in the end I found out that she needed surgery. Apparantely she had fainted three times in a short period of time because of severe pain around her liver and stomach. She told me that her galbladder needed to be removed, but that it wasn’t that bad and that I didn’t have to worry about anything. She didn’t want me to fly back for the surgery, so I begged her to call me every day until the day of the surgery.

You see, my mom and I are very close. She is the only family I have in the Netherlands and we’ve been through a lot ever since we were forced to flee Iran in 1999. She means the world to me and it breaks my heart that I won’t be able to be there for her. Sure, she has a lot of friends who can help her and even some of my friends have promised to visit her, but I won’t be there.

The next day I woke up and saw that one of my Dutch friends had been trying to reach me for hours. I assumed that he had heard about what happened to my mom and wanted to show his support, so I called back. However, it wasn’t my friend who picked up, but his mom: “Hi Moa, how are you? Sorry for this random phone call, but I’m afraid I have some terrible news. Yesterday we walked into X’s room and we found him on the floor. The funeral is next week and we were hoping that you could be there”. My friend had taken his own life. I can’t tell you how shocked I was. We hadn’t really spoken to each other for a long time, but that made things even worse. Hell, I never even got to tell him how amazing San Francisco has been so far. With pain in my heart I had to tell his mother that I would not be able to make it to the funeral. Once again, I can’t be there.

Receiving bad news when you are on the other side of the world hurts a lot more than it does back home, simply because you’re too far away to actually deal with everything. However, you can still find ways to make the best out of the situation. I may not be able to attend the funerals, but I can always visit their graves. I may not be able to physically be there for my mom, but I can still call her every single day to help her through everything. It’s hard, but you can’t run home whenever something happens. You’re currently living in San Francisco and you can always worry about the things back home when you’re actually there again. For now, the most important thing is to keep going. Just focus on the positive things in life. Oh, and chocolate ice cream helps too!