We are gathered here today in the memory of my mother, so that together we may acknowledge and share both our joy in the gift that her life was to us, and the pain that her passing brings.
My mom passed away on February 6. She died in her own way and on her own terms surrounded by us. We wish that so much of her life had not been lost to her illness, that things could have been different for her, and for us. While we know that she is at peace and that her struggles are at an end, there is pain and sadness. But even though she is gone, the ways she touched our lives will remain, and I ask you to keep those memories alive by sharing them with me and with one another.
The word mother is the name of god on the lips and hearts of little children. Let me start with, there are really no words to describe my closeness with my mother. There are only feelings, indescribable feelings. Feelings that make my heart burst and my whole being melt. Because my mother was my insides. She is my insides. My guts. My confidence. My bravery and my strength. My sensitivity, my compassion, my loyalty and even my laughter. She was everything. And no matter how much of our lives we have already lived, our parents are the one who have always been there.. Even in our thirties or sixties, when a parent dies there is still, somewhere inside, no matter how faint, the voice of the inner child begging., "Mommy please don't die.....Daddy, please don't die." For many of us, the first time we truly encounter death and grief is when one of our parents dies.. We often felt totally unprepared. We can't comprehend it.
Think of your worst break up and multiply it by 100. That doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of what you will feel. The floor fell out under me. I was in a headlong emotional free fall. There was no bottom to it.I felt an explosion in my chest, like it had burst open, propelling my spirit out into some cold, dark corner of the universe. Sleep won’t come, though—you will toss and turn for hours looking at old videos and pictures just so you can hear her voice or see her smile. And when you do eventually sleep, you think it was a dream. For just a second, you’ll forget she is gone. And then you realize it did happen. And it hurt, badly.
People will try to comfort you with the “right” words, but those words don’t exist. You will wish you were dead at times not because you hate life but because you want so badly to see your mama again. The thought of loving someone so much, of being so captivated by someone, only to have them ripped from you will take its toll on your heart and mind. It’s hard to try and move forward with your life when your confidant, friend, biggest fan, and defender is gone. What I will miss the most about my mother are the following:
I miss her voice
I miss asking her questions only she can answer
I miss seeing her sitting across from me
I miss her handwritten letters, her cards
I miss her cooking
I miss her validation.
I miss watching TV with her
I miss her getting the table ready for Persian New Year
I miss her companionship. She was my very best friend. A part of me was buried right next to my mom. I miss her love. No one loved me like my mom, and no one ever will again
One of the important things in my mom's life was Family. Life is all about relationships, and love is the point of it all. Me and my sister would call the times we had with our parents "paradise" because we were surrounded by love. laughter and happiness every single time we were together.
My mom had a great life. She became a nurse, married to a doctor who adored her. had three kids who all became doctors, traveled the world, even did her pilgrimage to Mecca. She had everything a person would ever want. My mom was very independent. She had a chance to live with me or my sister, but decided to get her own apartment in midtown Manhattan.
A dream of eight hours and a dream of eighty years are identical, and the only way we know we are dreaming is to wake up. In a dream, we can be a tiny baby or a toddler or an adolescent. We can get married, have children, pursue a career, go bankrupt, have grandchildren, move to a retirement community, and become old—all in a period of minutes. In the dream it is very real, just like this life. And just like a dream, you can't take anything with you except memoirs or pictures in your head.
I want to share some memories with you of my mom
-I remember my mom in Ashland place near Brooklyn hospital taking me and haleh to the supermarket around the corner when harried and aeme were our neighbors.
-I remember how my mother saved haleh life twice when she was choking.
-I remember how she attends all my plays at school and helped me to read and study.
-I remember how she could put a band-aid on me when I fell down
=I remember when she graduated for her master's degree in nurse with eddietamody
-I remember when she had to leave to Iran to take care of her mother was sick
I remember when she cried when her brother died in a car accident
I remember how she pushed to have her sister to come to live with us so she can have a better life
I remember when my dad's defibrator wouldn't stop shocking him in the hospital and just like in the term of endearment movie she told the staff and the doctors to do something.
I remember all the SUSMA parties she got ready for.
And one of my memories is coming home after school on a cold winter night see the light in the kitchen and I knew there was no other place else I wanted to be. The colder I got the wetter I got. I enjoyed it because I knew that in 2 minutes, I would be in that kitchen safe and warm. Walking to that kitchen was like walking to a hug because my mother would have milk and cookies ready for me.
There is no age limit on grieving the loss of your parents. It doesn’t make logical sense, but no matter how old we are when the last parent dies, we feel like an orphan. If the natural order in the cycle of life is followed, our parents will die before we do. Our minds understand this, but what we know intellectually doesn’t always transfer to how we feel. I should have been emotionally prepared to deal with their deaths. I wasn’t.
As Robert Frost said, “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in. My mom's death represents the end of an era, the final goodbye to my childhood. The people who remembered your first steps, the people who taught you to drive, the people who loved you through every awkward stage, and loved you even when you didn’t deserve it, the people who gave you life are gone. When your parents are no longer on earth, there is a feeling of home being gone. I was never homeless, never even close, yet when they were gone, it felt like my backup plan, my “just in case I run into hard times” plan, ceased to be. My soft place to land in a hard world was gone. My “home” died with my mom
I want to share with you what my mom would say if she had a chance. Realize that you only have one chance in life and you never know how long that time may last. Give that hug, mend that relationship and tell that person you care, and make the most out of every day because tomorrow is not that far away, and no one knows what tomorrow holds. That would be my mom's advice because that is the way she lived life! Because we do not know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. And yet everything happens only a certain number of times. And a very small number really. "How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood that is so deeply a part of your being you can’t even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps 4 or 5 times more? Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps 20. & yet it all seems limitless
Any of you that know me can look in my eyes and see that I am hurting badly inside, and I miss her so, so much. All I want is to talk to her once more and for her to give me a hug and tell me that everything is going to all right. I wish that she could shield me from the darkness as she always did in my youth. But regretfully she can't do these things anymore. But she will always live on through the hopes, dreams, accomplishments of myself and my family and because of that: She will always live on in my eyes.
