The emptiness is thick.
The garden walls and tangerine trees have witnessed another death, an end to a generation, an end to a collection of beautiful poetry, of stories spanning from the beginning of time to my grandfather’s life, of advice on love and life, of ruminations on the purpose and meaning of life. I remember my grandfather once telling me how we spend so much of our life filled with regret. I am now living in those moments. There are so many more questions for me to ask him, so many more poems for him to interpret, so many more stories for him to tell. I didn’t get to ask him about his uncles or his childhood in Tehran. I didn’t ask him about his wedding or about the birth of any of his children. I never asked him if he met Mossadegh or what happened when he was arrested for being a leader in his nationalistic movement. There are so many details about his life that I want to know and more importantly that I want him to know that I care about. I didn’t get to recite the poems that I had been memorizing for him. I didn’t get to show him my hands that I had been moisturizing everyday because he would tell me that they were too rough. I didn’t get to hold his hands in mine for the last time.
He would also always say how two hearts have a path to each other, that even though we are not sitting next to each other or speaking with each other, that our hearts are connected. This connection defies space and time. And I hope that it also defies life and death.