Seven Months

Shahdi Joon – Today was one of those days that if I had used all the cuss words in every language I speak, it would not have been enough to express my frustration and anger with life’s bitter injustices. Had I run into the ‘creator’ today, who knows what would have happened to him/her!!  For the first time ever in the last seven months, the thought did occur to me, even though momentarily, that maybe you were right and there was too much pain in this world. But, then my fighter spirit rose up again to re-focus my mind on life and the living!

A letter from one of Shahdi's friends

Hello Setareh!  

I just wanted to tell you how much I think about Shahdi and how much I miss her. I lay awake at night often, remembering the times we used to spend together as kids and teenagers. All the slumber parties and birthdays and Panera runs in the mornings. And although we didn't hang out much outside of school in high school, we always would have classes together and we'd always sit together and joke and laugh and try our best to pay attention, but it rarely worked when we would sit together.

Far Away Family

When I left Tehran in the summer of 1979 to go to college in the US, I never thought that 35 long years later, my daughter, my flesh and blood, would be buried, 3.5 hours from my starting US location, in Lincoln, Nebraska!! Nothing in my life had prepared me for such an event. It was not supposed to happen to us, to me, to my child! I often wonder if Shahdi had grown up around her extended family, would her depression over the loss of her friend have lasted as long, or would it have been overcome by the love and support of grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, and the other family members?