Goodbye to All That

              “Oh, how lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.” - Winnie the Pooh

 

              My mother is smiling to herself while old Bollywood music quietly plays off of my Baba’s new computer. As my Nannos hum to the messy Hindi lyrics, I scratch away at a lottery ticket with a dulling quarter.

              “I won five dollars,” I say.

              My aunt calls from across the dining table, “Hey, I knew that today would be our lucky day.”

              12 lottery tickets later, and never breaking even, eleven family members and I sit and pretend like $15 dollars in cash could make up for the karmic debt of death.

              Incessantly fiddling with her purple acrylic glasses, my Nanno whispers in my ear, “I’m scared, Rania.” Then, she tells me a story from the Quran and assures me that miracles do happen. I want to grab her brown tongue with my seventeen year old hands and scream THINGS AREN’T GOING TO CHANGE, but I don’t because I still believe they will, too. In our home, decorated with wooden crosses, evil eyes, and burnt sage, my family and I are completely convinced that our story isn’t actually going to end. I inch closer to my Nanno as she wipes my tears with a paper towel. Together, we are uncondi- tionally afraid of our reality. Nearly a year since my mother’s re-diagnosis, it had never occurred to me that she wouldn’t survive. I only became attuned to this reality two weeks before she passed away.

              It’s been ten years since I was the girl whose mom had cancer, but, on a December night, my mother breaks into tears revealing, “my breast cancer has come back.” At the end of 2021, my mother was re-diagnosed with breast cancer. This summer, she was hospitalized for over two weeks, and, on September 11th, she passed away.

              For so long, I believed that installing chairlifts in our home, having a bed in our kitchen, and hearing the dragging of canes and walkers would one day all work out in our favor. But that was foolish, I was foolish. I was inextricably blinded by hope. I’ve spent the majority of my life believing that luck was something you could quantify. I believed that in the bad we should expect good, and in the good we should expect bad, but that’s not how life works. Not only does this way of thinking diminish success and failure, but it also teaches us that we deserve to experience certain things. Something bad happens? Expect good. Some good? Expect the worst. I now feel like I can finally stand facing my daunting future, understanding that things are out of my control. What is meant to happen will happen, and what isn’t won’t.

              Swaying my legs back and forth, I sit at the counter after my mom’s celebration of life as my aunt details a final moment a friend shared with my mom. The story goes: my mother asked, “What do I have to look forward to?”

              “No more hangnails,” the friend responded.

              As my aunt repeats the response, I can’t help but smile. In a melancholy, fractured kind-of way, we both laugh, as I assume my mother did, too. There, we offer each other something to believe in: the hope that things would someday be less painful.

              I like being the girl people think can’t break. Friends have told me that I shield my emotions too much, teachers have commented on how “I never cry,” and my own father has told me that I’m not good at “raising my hand and asking for help.” But I promise that I’m trying. My hardships are silent, and I prefer them that way. There is nothing I can say to put words to what I am feeling. You don’t know that I have a notebook in my bedside table drawer where I write to my mother, or that I listen to a playlist of my mom’s favorite songs and spend evenings scavenging photo albums of family trips and childhood milestones to relive memories. You don’t know that I pray every night and have since I was eight. You don’t know what it feels like to hear friends complain about their mothers, or that I fear forgetting parts of her. And you don’t know what it felt like to say goodbye to someone who couldn’t say it back. Every time I have a question to ask, need advice, or just want to talk to someone, I’m reminded of what I have lost. But I could have lost my mother ten years ago to her first breast cancer battle. From teaching me how to walk in heels to arguing over Homecoming dresses to guiding me through my first few heartbreaks, I still got to grow up with my mother. Understanding to be grateful for all of the moments I did have, instead of those I won’t have has been my greatest reconciliation.

 

Mom- Thank you for teaching me that love is everything, and thank you for always reminding me of who I am.

I’ll see you later.