New School (Year), New Friends

I had only been in college for 11 weeks when I found out that my mom had brain cancer and I moved home. I only had one quarter of college under my belt. You can never choose the timing of a thing like your mom begin diagnosed with terminal cancer, but I have to say it was pretty bad timing for me. (I hope that didn't come off as being selfish)

All of my high school friends had left for college too. When I got back to my hometown, they weren't there. They were doing what I had been doing. They were building new lives for themselves. They were building new friendships. I don't blame them for that.

Well I spent one semester at a local (shitty) community college. I made one friend there. He quickly became my boyfriend. He essentially saved me. I was so incredibly lonely when I first moved back home from Chicago (I'm from/live in the San Francisco Bay Area). I had moved back home to be with my mom, but no one in my family seemed to appreciate or care that I had given up on my theater conservatory education. It seemed to me that my mom wanted to spend more time with her friends than with me. Let's just say, I got very extremely depressed. On top of dealing with my moms recent terminal illness diagnosis, I felt like I had nobody. I thank my boyfriend for helping through that time. He was the only person who paid any attention to me.

In the fall of 2011, I transferred to a 4-year college in the Bay Area, and that's where I go now. Mills College is an all-women's school. I never saw myself as someone who'd want to got o a school without boys. But do you know what it's like to be in an environment that if only women, where you feel so comforted and supported and encouraged. To not have any bitchy girls gossipping or creating bullshit drama.It's a place where everyone genuinely wants to help each other. As someone who's dealing with their mother's long illness and death, I certainly did not want to be in a place that was more about partying than education. Mills College is perfect for me at this stage in my life.

But while I say that, I have yet to make any close friends there. I've gone there one year, but I spent the whole year constantly anxious about how I should be home with my mom. I didn't join any sports or clubs because I wanted to spend my time with my mom. I turned down invitations to hang out and I didn't go to any school dances or gatherings. To some people I must have seemed like an outcast. But to the people I told about my mom, I hope the tried to understand what I was going through and understood that I just needed my space.

But now my mom's gone, and I feel like still the only person I have is my boyfriend. Not to say he isn't enough, but sometimes a girl wants other girl friends to talk to. And you'd think at an all-women's school I wouldn't have any difficulty making girl friends. Well that's my goal for this year.

Up until my mom got sick, I was the kind of person who was involved in tons of extracurriculars. And I've felt so empty not filling my time with tons of activities. I've felt like for the passed 18 months, all I've wanted to do is spend time with my mom. And do you know what that meant for about 13 months of that time before she got really ill? It meant sitting with her and feeling uncomfortable. Like "okay, we both know you're sick and are probably dying. Everyone keeps telling us I should make this time with my mom count. But what the hell does that mean? What should I be doing?" It was usually pretty awkward. I was so worried about making my time with her count, that I was too anxious to enjoy myself.

It feels weird to say it, but once my mom got really sick, around March 2012, I actually started enjoying our time together more. I felt useful. I could help her and take care of her. It felt good to do something in return for my mom who had taken care of me for the past 20 years.

Sorry, I got a little off track. But anyway, so I haven't really been able to make friends at school. And I'm hoping things will change this semester. Classes start in less than a week and I'm so so excited. I think keeping busy is the best way to keep me sane right now. If I'm bored, I get depressed.

The only thing I'm not really looking forward to is that I know people will ask me "How was your summer?" And what am I supposed to say to that? "Oh it kind of sucked actually." "Why? What happened?" "Oh, um, my mom died." How many times will I have to play through that conversation? Do I want to? One thing is for sure, I'm so grateful that I'm not in like 2nd grade when on the first day of school the teacher would always say "Okay let's go around the room and say one thing we'll always remember about this summer." That would be horrifying.

Let The Grief Begin

It's been over 3 weeks since my mom died. And it didn't really hit me until yesterday. Yesterday was August 20th. August 20th was a very important day to my mom, though we don't know why. All she told me was "August 20th is Arbitrary". It was the day she had chosen for herself to die. She told me that she just needed a day to work towards.

Well she didn't make it to August 20th. She didn't even make it to August.

She also said she wanted her "After Party" on August 20th. Well since yesterday was a Monday, we threw the After Party on the 19th. It was such a wonderful celebration of her life. About 200 people attended - from family to childhood friends to college classmates to her previous bosses and coworkers, to her meditation group. We had some of her paintings displayed in the room and had the slide show I made projected on the wall.

Watercolor by Noushin Sharif-Murphy - 1987



It was definitely a party, just like my mom asked for. We had tons of my mom's favorite foods like watermelon, tiramisu, and margaritas. We made sure it was a potluck event just like she wanted it to be. And we forced one of her employees to be in charge of the music. For some reason, that was the most important thing to her. She insisted over and over again that this employee be the dj. I'm no sure why. I don't think he has any experience as a dj. But she made me pinky promise that he would dj, and he did. Mostly importantly, there was lots of dancing. My mom LOVED to dance. Overall, I think it was a great party and I think my mom would have approved. She was pretty hard to please and she was so worried that we wouldn't do everything just like she asked. Well expect for throwing one day early, I think we did pretty good!


So as I said earlier, my mom's death didn't really hit me until yesterday. Until after the After Party. I spent the day very depressed and in tears. The phrase "I miss my mom" was playing over and over and over in my head. That's the worst day I've had so far.

Until August 20th, it just hadn't hit me. I knew my mom was dead, but I didn't really miss her yet. I still felt like she was here. Like things were still the same. I wanted to miss her. I wanted to cry. But the tears would never come out. The tears still have a hard time coming out. Sometimes I just with my eyes would cry already!


There's a song that was one of my mom's absolute favorites. It's in Farsi and it's by a singer named Dariush. She LOVED Dariush ever since she was in high school. She actually kept a poster of him on the back of her door in her office. This song in particular was her favorite. It's called Cheshme Man (My Eyes). Every time it came on, she would just stop talking and listen. I never really knew what it was about until a few months ago, my mom was listening to it and my aunt came in and said "Why are you letting her listen to this song? It's so sad!" Since then, every one of my mom's Iranian friends said "Don't let her listen to Dariush! He's too sad!"

Well turns out Cheshme Man is about a man who's brother has passed away. And he can't understand why his eyes aren't crying. He's begging to God to let his eyes cry. Sounds a lot like what I'm feeling right now.

 

 

These are the lyrics translated to English:

My Eyes

My eyes, please come help me,
My cheeks are dry, please do something,
Is there anything that can be done except crying?
We are hopeless, please weep
The one who is now gone will never come back
My heart wants to cry forever.
All the seas God has on earth with all the clouds in the sky
I wish he had given all of that to my eyes
So they could cry for me
The one who is now gone will never come back
My heart wants to cry forever.
The happy tales of my past
Has ended so fast like a dream
Now I must put my head on my knees and forever shed the tears of regret,
Nobody’s heart has as much sadness as mine
Nor nostalgia and sorrow like mine
Now that crying is the cure for my pain,
Why are my eyes lacking in tears.
They have stolen our bright sun
And drawn dark clouds underneath
Everywhere dark color of sadness
Our staying time is near its end
The one who is now gone will never come back
My heart wants to cry forever.
Destiny has gone blind and cannot see
The scar of its blade will stay in the heart
Sealed lips, chest stained with blood
That is the story of the one who stays behind

The one who is now gone will never come back
My heart wants to cry forever.



"Now that crying is the cure for my pain, why are my eyes lacking in tears?" That is the question I ask myself everyday. I know everyone grieves differently. But I feel sad, I just want my eyes to show it. I want the grief to begin.

"Someone Reads The Eulogy"

I mentioned this in an earlier post ("The End Is Near"), but I wanted to talk about it in further detail.

One day, about a month before my mom passed away, I was encouraging her to draw in her notebook like I did every time I came to visit. When all of a sudden, she turned the page and started writing. This is pretty unusual. By this time, she was having difficulty writing, so I was pretty shocked.

I was looking through her notebook yesterday when I found that page that she wrote almost 2 months ago:

It took me awhile to decipher it, but I'm pretty sure it says

1. Guests arrive
2. Someone reads the eulogy
This isn't about mourning, this is about celebrating her life.
After the burial, please gather at the

At this point, I remember her looking up at me and I asked her what she was writing. She didn't say anything, she just kept looking at me. I read the first two lines and got too scared to read the rest.

But now looking back on it, I can see how amazingly brave she was. At this point in her life, she couldn't walk or move her left arm. She had trouble eating, talking, and writing. She couldn't do very simple math problems anymore. Sometimes it seemed like she had the mental capacity of a 5 year old.

But then, out of nowhere, she would write things like this. And this would remind me that she was still the same person on the inside. She wasn't totally gone. She's still the most courageous person I have ever known. And I hate brain cancer for doing this to her.

"To My Dearest Misha"

My dad was reading through my mom's journal from the past year and he found this note that my mom wrote to me on my birthday this year: (click on the picture to view it larger)

If you can't read it, she wrote:

"The connection that we experience is very close. I am glad I got to be a part of it. Keep on bringing joy to everyone's life you touch with your bright smile."

 I miss her so much.

She Just Let Go

I think it's about time I stop putting off this blog post.

For those of you who don't follow me on Twitter or Facebook, my mom passed away on Sunday.

We were all expecting it to happen. Honestly, I am so incredibly amazed and impressed with my mom for staying alive as long as she did. She fell into a very deep sleep on July 19th and never woke up. She went 10 days without any food or water. And as she requested, no feeding tubes or IV fluids either. I didn't know that was even humanly possible! How does someone survive 10 days without food or water? I know I couldn't do that.

We don't know why she was holding on for so long. After a week, my dad starting telling her that it was okay to let go. But she just didn't seem to want to leave us. We all told her over and over again that we would be okay and that we love her very much. But she kept hanging on.

On Saturday, I decided that we should watch my mom's favorite movie. It's an Italian film called Cinema Paradiso. She absolutely loved that movie. I knew she couldn't see it, because she was asleep. And I know she couldn't she couldn't understand what they were saying because it's in Italian. But I know she loved the music from the movie so I moved a tv into her bedroom and played the movie for her. Here's the trailer for the film:

It was a women's movie afternoon. It was me, my mom, my sister, both my grandmas, both my aunts, and my friend's mom. I really enjoyed it and I think my mom did too because her breathing slowed down.

That night, I wanted to stay awake with her, but I was so exhausted, I just couldn't. My aunt and I slept in my parents' bed, which was next next to the hospital bed. And my dad and my sister slept in sleeping bags on the floor.

My dad says he got up at 2:30am to give her a half dose of morphine. (He was so worried that she was in pain, even though every nurse said she looked peaceful and pain free.) He sat with her as her breathing became slower and slower. Sometime just before 4:00am, he must have started dosing off because just at 4:02am, both my aunt and I woke up. I'm not sure what woke us up, but I opened my eyes and was listening. I knew not to get too worried when I didn't hear any breathing because my mom had been taking up to 20 second pauses between breaths. As I was laying there counting the seconds, my aunt jumped up and yelled at my dad "She's not breathing anymore." She was right. My mom slipped away just when no one was watching.

We woke my sister up, which is always very difficult - she's a really deep sleeper. She later told me it felt like a dream. I told her it did for me too. And she said "No. Like it REALLY felt like a dream. I wasn't really awake."

My sister and I sat with my mom while my dad and aunt called hospice and the funeral home and all the family. She and I sat next to her and my sister said "Look! Isn't she smiling?" And she was. I couldn't help but take a picture of it. It was just so beautiful. I compared that picture to several pictures from when she was in the coma thing. That was the only picture she was smiling in. She was happy to finally go to a better place. She didn't have to fight anymore. She just let go.

We talked to her. I told her "I know you probably think this is really stupid. We know that you're looking down on us now, and what do you see? Your two girls talking to a dead body that isn't you anymore. I know you're always with us now."

Of course I broke down crying once or twice too. We all did. But after an hour of that, I just wanted to go back to sleep. I wanted to dream of something happier. But unfortunately, my dad is that kind of person that just babbles when he's uncomfortable or doesn't know what to say. He wouldn't let me sleep. After about an hour, I was finally dozing off when the hospice nurse arrived. She was way too cheery to be dealing with a death at 5:00 in the morning.

We chatted with her. Too much small talk in my opinion. After she left, the men came to take her body away.

I was terrified of that moment, but it didn't seem to bother me as much as I thought it would. I sat in the living room alone as I watched the men carry her out of her bedroom and out the front door in a black bag.

It was about 7:00am when they took her body away. My sister and I just sat on the couch. We really didn't know what to do with ourselves. We turned the TV on and it happened to be the start of the Olympics. We watched the Olympics all day. I think it was the perfect distraction.We left the Olympics on the TV for several days. I think I'll always associate the London Olympics with my mom's death. But not in a sad way. In a way that the Olympics has really helped with through this time. It's given us something to focus on that wasn't about death. And it's something that everyone can relate to and talk about. So thank you to the London Olympics.

For the next few days, I felt like we were all just waiting around the house for people to come and bring us flowers or food and give their condolences. It was awful. Staying inside all day because people expected us to be there. I don't think my dad left that house for over a week.

We were able to transport my mom's body to UCSF so that her brain could be donated to research, just as she requested. It was her dying wish and I'm so glad that we were able to make it come true. UCSF did an MRI of her brain and then took her into surgery and removed the brain. They will compared the MRI results to the actual brain so that they will hopefully be able to better read MRI scans. I hope my mom's brain will benefit other brain tumor patients. I remember about a year ago when my mom had an MRI and her oncologist said, "There is something growing, but it's probably just swelling, not tumor growth." Then 4 weeks later, another MRI and the oncologist said "It's still growing so I'm guessing that it's no swelling, but actually tumor growth." The next week they took my mom into surgery, and what did they find? It was just swelling. But because we had to stop the chemo for the surgery, the tumor cells that were there had developed a resistance to the chemo that was working. I was so mad. I couldn't believe that scientists and doctors could know so little. Give me the MRI scans, and I could tell you just about as much as the oncologist did.

I know it's not the oncologists fault though. There just isn't the research to know more. I really hope my mom's brain will be able to solve this horrible problem. I don't want anyone else to have to go through that.

The Wednesday after my mom's passing, we had the funeral. We all drove to the funeral home where my mom was being kept and two older Iranian women arrived to wash my mom's body, as is Muslim tradition. All female friends and family were invited to participate in the washing, but I chose not to do it. I was too scared at the time. Even my aunt didn't do it. Only two of my mom's very best friends went in to help. I spoke with them after, and they said that it was very spiritually cleansing. Like this was the final thing that they could do for her. They cleaned her body and prepared her and made her look nice. Looking back, I kind of wish I had participated, but I think my mom understands that I just didn't feel comfortable at the time.

As my aunt had insisted, a Muslim man came to recite the prayers and oversee the Muslim burial. I understood most of what her said, and trust me, he rambled on for about 15-20 minutes longer than he had too. It was so hot that day and I swear I almost fainted standing in the sun while he was just babbling. Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful that he volunteered his time to lead the prayers. I just don't think my mom gave a shit. I sure didn't.

After he finished speaking, several people each read things in front of everyone who was there. I read the excerpt from the Richard Bach book There's No Such Place As Far Away that I included in one of my previous posts Now Death Is Really Near.

You have no birthday because you have always lived.You were never born, and you will never die. You are not the child of the people you call mother and father, but their fellow adventurer on a bright journey to understand that things that are. Fly free and happy beyond forever, and we'll meet now and then when we wish, in the midst of the one celebration that can never end.

 My mom's friend read a poem that we actually found saved onto my mom's computer. It's called She Let Go

She let go. Without a thought or a word, she let go.
She let go of fear. She let go of the judgments.
She let go of the confluence of opinions swarming
around her head.
She let go of the committee of indecision within her.
She let go of all the ‘right’ reasons. Wholly and completely,
without hesitation or worry, she just let go.
She didn’t ask anyone for advice. She didn’t read a
book on how to let go... She didn’t search the scriptures.
She just let go.
She let go of all of the memories that held her back.
She let go of all of the anxiety that kept her from moving forward.
She let go of the planning and all of the calculations about how to do it just right.
She didn’t promise to let go.
She didn’t journal about it.
She didn’t write the projected date in her day-timer.
She made no public announcement and put no ad in the paper.
She didn’t check the weather report or read her daily horoscope.
She just let go.
She didn’t analyze whether she should let go.
She didn’t call her friends to discuss the matter.
She didn’t do a five-step Spiritual Mind Treatment.
She didn’t call the prayer line.
She didn’t utter one word. She just let go.
No one was around when it happened.
There was no applause or congratulations.
No one thanked her or praised her.
No one noticed a thing.
Like a leaf falling from a tree, she just let go.
There was no effort. There was no struggle.
It wasn’t good and it wasn’t bad.
It was what it was, and it is just that.
In the space of letting go, she let it all be.
A small smile came over her face.
A light breeze blew through her.
And the sun and the moon shone forevermore.

While preparing things for the funeral, I remember that years ago my mom had emailed me a worksheet that she had done at a workshop about finding your "primary aim" in life. She encouraged me to also fill out the worksheet, but I never did. I should probably do it now. I searched through my old emails, and found it. She listed these five things as the most important things she wanted in her life:

1. I want a life full of new learnings everyday. I want my life to be filled with personal growth and understanding.

2. I want my mom to accept me for who I am not who she wants me to be. I want us to relate to each other.

3. I want my children to be independent, intelligent and capable to make decisions in their lives that best suits them.

4. I want to surround myself with people that I love, respect and trust. I want to live in an environment free of hatred where people could accept and respect each other's differences.

5. I want to grow old gracefully, with dignity and self-respect. I want to die while I am still healthy and active.

 I can't explain the feeling of reading this list of things most important to my mom the day after she died. She wrote this list over 5 years ago.

I will do my very best to make my mom proud and fulfill her #3. I'm sad to report that I don't think my grandma ever fulfilled #2. She such stubborn lady, just like my mom was. Like mother, like daughter. My mom worked so hard to make sure she developed good relationships with her daughters.

#5. I wish #5 were true. My mom was never able to grow old. She was not able to die will she was still healthy and active. Brain cancer took that away from her.

The last assignment of this worksheet is to write your on eulogy. We also read this eulogy at the funeral. This is what my mom wrote about herself:

Throughout her life, through hard work and persistence, Noushin managed to grow from a fearful follower to a fearless leader! She enriched our lives with her sense of restless conviction to her beliefs and values. She was a creative visionary who saw beyond appearances through the depths of the people around her and was able to bring out the best in them. She had the strength to pursue her dreams despite insurmountable barriers and limitations surrounding her. Her highest sense of truth was her commitment to her friends and family. The gift she left behind is the beauty of her character that touched us all.

 This is my mom. This is her.

I also made a slide show of my mom: