Life Lessons

Life has taught me a few lessons in the past three months; some have been very hard and bitter but others sweet and encouraging.

The most important lesson is that one cannot take life for granted and no one knows when their time is up. So, better enjoy every minute of every day because that might be our last day, last minute, and last breath.  When I saw Shahdi in the morning on November 26, 2013, she had just woken up and was looking in the refrigerator for something to eat. Neither she nor I knew that by 5PM that day, she would be gone forever. Had I known….

The hardest lesson has been the realization that I have to endure this enormous pain and continue with the rest of my life when my beautiful, smart, talented child, my flesh and blood, is no longer alive. I wish I was never forced to learn this most difficult and heart-breaking lesson for as long as I lived.  I have only one choice to avoid this endless lesson but I choose not to even consider it for obvious reasons. First of all, I am not as courageous as Shahdi, secondly, I don’t wish to ruin the lives of the people I love and who love me, and thirdly, I am not a quitter.

The next lesson was to realize that my child’s destiny was out of my control and I was powerless in helping her avoid a tragic end. This is the lesson with which I am struggling every day.  To accept that there was nothing I could have done to change the outcome is very difficult for me. I still believe I could have helped her, had she given me a chance. She gave up too quickly on herself. She was only 19 years old.  She had her entire life ahead of her, but sadly she was unable to see beyond her present problems. I have to accept that depression and anxiety had totally clouded her brain and judgment and as a result, she could only see her life as a stormy cloudy sky, which of course, it was not. I did not know that she was contemplating on suicide or I would have taken more serious measures to help her. I would not have left her to herself to find her way and bounce out of her negative moods on her own; I would have intervened even if she didn’t like it. I would have fought her low moods alongside her, cheering her along the way to recovery. How I regret not having been able to help my darling Shahdi. How sad that makes me…

The only sweet lesson in this tragedy has been the outpour of love and support that we have received from our family, friends, neighbors, and acquaintances. People have been very kind to us. I suppose the suicide of a beautiful 19-year-old girl is not something that happens every day and therefore affects anybody who doesn’t have a heart of stone. A child born and raised in a good family with loving parents who dotted on her, who had every resource available, taking her own life is quite unbelievable. So many people reached out to us in the last three months offering their support. Their love and sympathy carried us through the first few weeks and gave us strength. Now that the dust has settled, it is just us and the rest of our lives and the emptiness that Shahdi left behind – a vast emptiness which will never be filled for as long as we live.