Dear babcia,
It's been almost a year. Almost a year of a plethora of feelings, ranging from despair to anger to acceptance to guilt to grief. I guess the experts would say that these are the normal stages of processing something like this. We are all trying to continue our lives here, with you on our minds. Some of us are doing better than others, and I think you prompted some of us to really look at our lives and make some changes, some bigger, some smaller. I have to tell you that I haven't always been as brave as you would have had me be, and I hope I haven't let you down (although I know that at this point you would tell me that you could never be disappointed in me). Sometimes the feelings get too overwhelming and I feel like I'm going to break down. I won't though, because I am as strong as you raised me to be.
I have often thought about all the things I would have told you had I had the time or the opportunity, or most importantly, the courage. We were never really talkative in our family, and the language barrier made it so that we never really discussed deeper, meaningful things. I know that you had thoughts and opinions and stories to tell. We were never the kind of family to share stories of things past. Consumed by our everyday lives, we would recount mundane everyday faits divers to each other at family gatherings. Therefore this is my attempt to break this, and to share with you my thoughts since I believe that you are listening.
I guess the most pressing feeling is that of regret. Regret of not having shared enough with you, and this goes further, the feeling of not enjoying the present, of not seizing the moment when I had the opportunity. I find it difficult not to dwell on the past and not to charge my future with highly unrealistical expectations. I think it is in my dreamer nature to do these things. We race through this life filling tasks and always looking forward to something, as if we don't exist in the present. This is not necessarily something that is inherently bad, but it is however something I try to be wary of, since nobody knows how much time we are allotted in this life. I have been trying to figure out with an analytical mind what is wrong with me. But I am slowly starting to accept that there might not be anything wrong with me, but it is just taking me a bit longer to find my path. But more on that in another letter.
I feel very nostalgic during this time of year, at the end of autumn. The air is crisp, the leaves are a spectrum of colours of fire and I feel regretful and inspired at the same time. The city is beautiful this time of the year, filled with the melancholy of cold metallic edges of buildings and the warmness of big chunky scarves and steam from take-away coffee cups in the morning. I miss you and I hope you are looking down on us with pride and joy.
Photos by unsplash
