One of the more difficult parts of living so far from home is that you tend to think life will remain the same for everyone you've left behind.

I may just be a very selfish person for thinking it, but I may have harboured some hope that I could come home anytime, and nothing nor no one would have changed or moved on. As if life back home stood still in time waiting for my arrival to start-up again.

Alas, this egocentric fantasy gets tainted for me every time the slightest thing happens back home and I'm not around to see it first-hand. Silly things like when my dad bought a new car last month, or my brother getting a new Macbook (how am I going to mess around with it from here!?). Then there are things like life events of friends - engagements, marriages and babies.

I know what others have told me is true. I will see everyone soon and hopefully get to enjoy other moments in their life and I'm after a certain goal so it's just a sacrifice.

But then there are times, like today, when there is a death in the family and while everyone is grieving together at home, I feel like I've been stranded and have no shoulder to lean on other than over the phone. That's probably the most self-absorbed thing to think - how I cannot grieve like everyone else. Rather than think of what my family is going through I'm being selfish.
I was away this past weekend in Sydney, touring and having fun. When I got back this morning and called home, no one told me what happened because I'd been sick and was exhausted from the trip. So I rambled on about inane things and didn't pick up why everyone sounded 'off'. Later in the evening (at home) my mom called to tell me. By this time pretty much all of our relatives and friends had found out. Somehow I became one of the last.

The relative who passed away lived in India, somewhere I've been dying to go since my last trip was when I was about 6 years old. I remember right before my sister was born, some eight and a half years ago, I was thinking about how time was going by so quickly and all these relatives I had in India who I barely remembered but who talk about me as if I was right there. Heavy thoughts for a 16 year old. Since we don't have any family in Canada, and not the big of a family anywhere else, I hoped always to meet my paternal grandparents as well as my maternal grandmother's only sister and her family.

A few weeks before my sister was born, my paternal grandfather passed away. He was always someone my dad spoke so highly of and endlessly about. I had hoped I'd get the chance to hear stories from him about my dad's childhood and his own. When I heard of his death, I grieved for the grandfather I had missed meeting and all my missed chances. Still all about me...

Today my maternal grandmother's only sister passed away. And after hearing so many things from my grandmother about her, I was looking forward to a trip to India to meet her. I feel like I've missed something again. Like there are these gaps in my life that I'd been wanting to fill and now, never can.

I still cry today at moments when I miss my mom's brother - he passed away a month before I was born. He and my mom, being only a year apart, were very close. I rememberRuby saying in a post of hers awhile ago that you cannot miss what you don't know. I've struggled with that for a long time since being a kid. I thought it was weird for me to miss someone I never even had the chance to meet. But I think when I hear about how happy and excited he was to have heard he was going to be an uncle, I think of all the moments in my life he would have been around for.

For some reason I miss my uncle more than my maternal grandfather, who passed away when I was 2. My aunt (mom's only other sibling) says I was lucky since I was the only grandchild on their side to meet him. I don't think 'lucky' is a fit word though. Maybe I feel more attached to him for that reason though.

Regardless of all of this, I cannot get over the selfish thoughts floating in my head. I should be more concerned for everyone else in the family and how they are dealing with the loss in our family today. Instead I keep thinking about my loss.

Labels: family