Two years on today..Letter to my Mother
(Diary extract Boxing Day, 2006)
Boxing Day – the second anniversary of your death. We all met (the Iranian side of the family and Sue, one of your favourite friends of mine) at Birling Gap, where we scattered your ashes in the sea, as you requested, flown over from Thailand. It’s a gorgeous place, you chose well. Even the cafe where we sat and had tea and crisps, so completely 1960’s England, like it must have been when you lived in that area. Delia tried to make sandcastles in the freezing wind, and we cast a flower Sue gave me for you and a crown of ivy from Raphaella, into the waves.
I didn’t sense you there, it’s like you are very faraway now, you’re spread far and wide or something, not so connected to one place but everywhere and in everything, I felt your embrace in my imagination and heard your voice, and cheeky laugh of reassurance that everything will be ok. I cooked Fesinjan (chicken in walnut and pomegranate sauce) for Khaleh Goli, Koosha, Sanaz, Fariba Leo and Delia. Never as delicious as yours, but you did have 30 years more practice. We ate and joked in our cosy kitchen and drank champagne in your honour. We didn’t talk about you much directly, but you were present. Khaleh Goli’s hair is an amazing white gold colour now, you would like it. Strange I will never get to see what you look like as an old woman, say 80 or something. Just as you wanted.
I got so many texts and messages today, felt a lot of love coming to me and us from all over the world. I was helped to see today that I don’t need to fill a space left by you, because the whole landscape has changed and there is nothing to be done about that, except be fully myself within it and embrace what comes. More and more I sense myself growing up with this. I will always be your child. I will always feel waves of sadness come and go, but I know what works is to live a life full of the qualities I most loved in you: generosity, freedom of spirit, love, creativity, passion. Sometimes it will be like that and sometimes it won’t. And thats ok.
