Moe

My uncle Moe’s ashes will be scattered from Golden Gate tomorrow. He desiced to end his life at the age of 69 and this was his last wish. Our final meeting was two years ago in Tehran. We walked and talked a lot about everything from personal lives and state of the world. He seemed determined to see all the neighbourhoods of his childhood. From few years ago he had started giving out his belongings to my cousins and me. I already had his lovely analogue Canon camera and I made sure he knows I have been using it in its full capacity and enjoying it a lot.

I hadn’t met him until I was 18.He left the country before the revolution. He married in US .I would only talk to him on the phone every new year. He had a soft warm voice and when I finally met him, he was the same warm, soft person you would imagine hearing his voice. But he also was eccentric in the way that he wouldn’t follow certain rules, we couldn’t compromise and for an 18 year old frustrated girl in Tehran that was the greatest combination. He was married to an African American lady from Chicago. He had lots of  gems of blues recordings with him .We listened to all that music. We became close friends. He had his hi8 camera. He was filming all the time .We shared joys and angers. We explored the town. We went to cinema a lot and in one occasion the moral police arrested us. He had long hair and we might have seemed too friendly to them .

He told me about times he had to shut down everything. He would go in to silence fasts for days and weeks. When he left Iran, we kept writing letters .The letters would stop when he would go in to one of those silent modes and then he would come out the cave and long letters would flow back and forth.

His decision to end his life was planned for a long time. He didn’t see the point of getting old and possibly becoming burden for any one. He enjoyed life and was not too much attached to it either. He loved and cared for everyone but that didn’t weakened him in his decision about his own life. Could we make him change his mind? Did we try hard enough? He was still healthy and he could do so much in life.

This is the situation of being left behind by someone taking his own life. For me there is a sense of admiration to his determination combined with sadness, combined with anger and most of all knowing how hard it will be to miss him.

I know he used to see this blog. Even if we didn’t talk for months, we would mention something he had seen here. Maybe he was my only regular reader.