The "Unfortunate Mothers" Club

The “Unfortunate Mothers” Club

On Tuesday, November 26^th, 2013, I unexpectedly received admission against my will to an exclusive club, the Unfortunate Mothers Club!  I knew my grandmothers, my mother-in-law, and my aunt Guity had been lifetime members of this unfortunate club but I never in my wildest dreams thought I would one day become a member too. I would have done anything in my power to avoid it had I known the enormous cost of membership.

When I was growing up, I had heard on numerous occasions about the premature death of Aunt Ezat and Uncle Sehaam on my paternal side, and two uncles on my maternal side who had perished as young boys. It was not until I left childhood and entered adolescence that I finally realized the gravity and sadness of these stories. Until then, this history had not stirred much emotion in me, but as I became a teenager and my understanding of death became more profound, I began to understand the enormity of the losses endured by my family, in particular by my grandparents.

My grandfathers were unable to have a significant presence in my childhood. I never met my maternal grandfather because he passed away when my mother was only seven years old and I lost my paternal grandfather when I was ten. The only recollections I have of him, are of a very old man with dentures. He was over ninety years old when he passed away. Unfortunately, due to his old age, he was never an important player in my childhood.

My grandmothers on the other hand were quite active, present and involved in my childhood and I have such fond and cherished memories of them. They both were very strong women, one with a happy and positive disposition (the maternal one), and the other with somewhat of a negative one.

I used to call my maternal grandmother, Mamani, and my paternal grandmother, Aziz. I loved them both dearly. However, I was Aziz’s favorite, simply because, while I was a child, she had no other granddaughter but me.  Mamani on the other hand had a couple of other granddaughters before I entered the scene and there was fierce competition among her twelve grandchildren to get her attention!  Both my grandmothers played an important part in my life and I am the person I am today, partly because of them. Mamani showed me strength, optimism, courage, self-confidence, and family unity while Aziz showed me generosity, kindness, altruism, charity to the needy, pessimism, and submission to fate.  They were both outstanding women who had faced several challenges in their lives but had managed to march forward despite the hardships. Mamani was able to maintain her zest for life after the loss of her husband and young sons, but Aziz had forever been emotionally scared by the loss of her children and never fully recovered from her sorrow.

Now that I am faced with the same colossal challenge, am I inclined to be more like Mamani or Aziz?  It may be too early to tell because today is only the 7-week anniversary of Shahdi’s passing and I feel like I have very contradictory emotions. Like Mamani, I have a zest for life which is pulling me forward but at the same time, like Aziz, I feel emotionally scarred for life. I do not know where my journey through the bumpy, dark, painful, and tear-filled road of grief will take me. For Arman’s sake, I hope I come out as Mamani did, because the alternative will doom the rest of my life to despair, melancholy, and hopelessness.  I wish to be there for Arman and Mehrdad. I do not wish them to feel like they lost me too when they lost Shahdi, just as how I felt about losing the real Shahdi due to Lauren’s death.

As a new member of this unfortunate club, I can only imagine how my daughter’s life would have been, had she lived a normal life.  Only in my imagination I can attend her college graduation and see her in the black robe walking on the stage to receive her diploma, admire her at her wedding in her white fitted dress and fill with pride in seeing the most beautiful bride ever, offer her my hand and encouraging words as she is giving birth to her first child, welcome her and her children to my house, watch her children while she and her husband go out to dinner, go shopping with her and her children, celebrate all the birthdays and other major holidays with her and her family and Arman, etc.  Now, I can never experience any of these events in reality, but only in my imagination. How sad that is indeed!  How desperately sad I am for having become a member of this club! I wish Shahdi’s life trajectory had not altered so drastically with Lauren’s death. I wish she had never befriended Lauren and had never been exposed to the loss of her best friend. So many regrets….So many mistakes….. How can one live with such regrets? I wish I could have gone back in time and corrected so many mistakes I made along the way. Maybe if I had taken different actions, Shahdi would have been alive and happy now, in college, pursuing her dreams.

As a mother, I feel like a total failure because I was entrusted with the well-being of a beautiful, healthy baby girl and in less than twenty years, I totally ruined her. I provided her with an environment which contributed to her depression and premature demise. I was not able to take care of this beautiful human being that I brought home on Christmas Eve 1993. I totally messed up. I managed to convert a bubbly happy child into a sad, angry, depressed adolescent.  What a horrible mother I have been!  Maybe Shahdi was right when she told me that I should have never had children. I was unable to help my child. Whatever I did was ineffective and maybe even counterproductive.  She was the perfect child for the first twelve years of her life and then she slowly started changing into a different Shahdi after Lauren's passing .  And I, as her mother, was not able to guide this new Shahdi into the right path in order to save her from self-destruction.

 I was not a good mother because I could not help my daughter. I feel responsible for her death. I feel responsible for her desire to end her life after only living for nineteen years. How I wish I could have a second chance for correcting my mistakes, for trying to understand her better, and for telling her every day that I was proud of her and loved her. Alas, only if I could! Now, I have to live with this enormous guilt for the rest of my life, which I hope is not very long. I am tired. I am heart-broken. I am sad. I am ready to go.

As a member of the Unfortunate Mother’s Club, I had to give last kisses and hugs to the lifeless body of my darling child, the beautiful young woman at the prime of her life who was lying motionless in a white coffin with colored red lips and a red rose in her long black hair. I had to caress one last time her beautiful perfect long fingers with her favorite rings still in place. I had to stop myself from screaming as loud as I could as the coffin’s lid was lowered slowly and closed forever, hiding our priceless treasure for eternity.

I had to witness the placement of our gorgeous daughter, a treasured part of my flesh and blood, several feet under ground in a rectangular hole with dirt poured on top of her, keeping her out of sight forever.  Yes, as an unfortunate mother, I felt helpless. Part of my soul was buried with Shahdi to keep her company. I hope her spirit will forgive me for not having been able to save her.  I wish I could have been a better mother and taken better care of her while I had her.  I ask for nothing but for her forgiveness.