Life After Death, Spirit, & The Long Absence of A Woman From Mashad, Iran.
I’ll call her S. She was a good friend of my parents. Even though she was Persian, like my father, it was in fact my mother that met her initially, back in Barcelona, where my mother was sent in the late 1980’s to help my cousins get from Iran, through Turkey, then Barcelona, and finally to Canada. But that story, alas, is for another time.
I’m telling you about S, because she was there while my mother passed away. We had known her for years. She was always a shy type, her voice meek as if she was always afraid to express herself.
When she came to the hospital she still had that shyness but something in her was more assertive. My father later told me she had become more devout and religious as time went on, finding the faith that had made her hometown of Mashad, a city in eastern Iran, the center of religious life.
While my mother lay in a coma in the ICU unit in a hospital in suburban Toronto from a grave hemorrahagic stroke, S kept up a common theme during those few days, repeating to me in a whisper now and then that my mother would survive the ordeal.
She always told me this in private, never around the others, as if we were the only ones who could be in the know, like we were some sort of co-conspirators in hope.
Her insistence was in complete contradiction to what the doctors were saying; we were told, essentially, that my mother’s case was hopeless.
Speaking to me in Farsi, S would say things like: “Your mother will survive… I know it! You have to believe this… She’s coming back.”
She was definitely persistent, I’ll give her that. I would let her speak, nodding, not contradicting her words, which probably lead to her to think that I was in lock step with her words.
But in my mind, the day of my mother’s passing was fast approaching. We were even told that we might want to take her off life support, sooner rather than later. When S heard me talking of this she pulled me aside in the visitor’s area. It was only the two of us in the room. She started in again on how my mother would get through this, but now there was a subtle desperation in her voice, her conviction undermined by a wavering which I interpreted as anxiety.
Finally, it was time for me to speak, to express myself. I looked her in the eye, and told her as straight as I could, that my mother’s life was coming to an end. It was imminent. There was nothing left for us to do.
She went silent. I could see she was breaking inside, as I had broken when I heard the news a couple of days earlier. But she needed to hear this, she needed to hear it from me. S remained silent for the rest of the day. Her silence extended beyond my mother’s passing — after the ordeal she lost touch with our family.
Obviously, she was quite devastated by it all.
It’s four years later now. What’s hit me about the interaction with S is the fact that during those days in the hospital we never broached anything regarding the spiritual life.
Considering what I heard about her new found faith, such a conversation would, I assume, have been appropriate. We all know we will pass away at one point or another; this cannot be avoided.
Passing away is quite natural, not an anomaly.
But then what of the spirit? There is more mystery than clarity regarding the latter. But still, like the end of life, it cannot be dismissed.
Sure, my mother still passed away. But what of her essence is still there and immortal?
This is what I’m thinking about as I write this, along with S’s strange and lasting absence.
