Back from Stockholm (2)

When I know that my mother get cancer, I remembered my youngest brother who died with brain cancer from 12 years ago. I found every thing is repeating in the same consequence, with the same details. The same road which full of pain and led to death. And I could not think about any thing else, I could not see any thing except that. And I could not know how long this road will take, when the end will be, no one can know. I broke down for tow days with very bad imagination of the future. But I found it is too much from me to cause more pressure up on my family members. They know the hard truth and they live with it and challenge it by standing beside my sick mother and taking care of her, while I were abroad. No one of them need to have over load which I could be if I still broking down, but it is really hard what is the life do to us and how it take people we love away without apologizing or asking. At the first I decided not to think about the future and what will happen after one hour. But it does not work all the time, because I still thinking that every word from my mother will be the last one. I felt that the death is flying around us in every where and at every time. I saw it in every black cat I saw. I found it in every conversation with any one around me.

But I remembered a conversation between me and Javeria Kabani, the project manager of YLVP, when I asked about here impetration of my interview before I became a participant of YLVP. She said that I was "very strong". which reminded me with Roger`s strange question to me at the same interview: when do you think that someone is strong? I answered: when this one achieve his-her goals. And when he asked me when I feel strong, I told him it is when I feel that I succeed in teaching my students. at that time I was going to this interview just to test myself, my abilities. I did not have any expectations about what will happen after this interview.

When I remembered all of these things about being strong, I start asking myself if I choose to be strong or I forced to be strong. I found it as something difficult, hard and sometimes harmful. I said to myself that neither chosen or being forced to, it is the same result which I need now. Yes I need to be stronger, to challenge my weakness and to get over this situation and start learning how to live with my mother's disease. I found Javeria`s talking so supportive to me at this moment which I think it is the hardest time of my life till now.

I found myself and my family as a group of people walking on a road without knowing the directions or the place or to where the road will lead, just trying to keep ourselves standing up hand in hand, sharing pain together without showing tears or causing sound.