When my beloved aunt passed away, I shoved my grief deep down to help my mum cope. But years later, my pain came pouring out

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All around my home, on every shelf and in every room, delicate copper photo frames stand tall. From the kitchen to the guest room, the faces of my loved ones smile back at me. There’s my husband Andy, 38, and our daughter Amelia Elina, four. Our parents, grandparents, Andy’s sister and brother, and our best friends. My uncles here, and cousins in Iran and America - even their children.

But earlier this year, Millie made a keen observation. ‘Mummy, why are there no pictures of Elina?’ she said. There are no pictures of my mum’s youngest sister, Elina, the aunt I loved so much I named my daughter after her. Truthfully, after Elina’s death, I found it too painful to see her pictures anymore. 

Though Elina lived in Tehran, Iran, and I grew up in Hertfordshire, she’d been a huge part of my life, and one of my most favourite people.

On every trip to Iran, Elina’s home became my own. Her food tasted like my mum’s, her eyes sparkled with mischief and she had the naughty laugh the women in my family, including me and my daughter, share. She was liberal, forward-thinking, supportive and fiercely independent. There was so much to admire about her. 

A lifetime of memories

So Millie’s question set me thinking. During lockdown, I started fishing out photos from all the many month-long trips I’d spent with Elina. I stopped at one she’d taken of me with my three cousins, Salar, Sardar and Arian - Elina’s son, just minutes before everyone else had gone to bed. Late into that hot Tehran night, the four of us had played backgammon, pranked each other relentlessly and laughed till we cried.

Then at 4am, there was a creak as the door swung open and there stood Elina. Instead of telling the four of us off for making so much noise, she smiled and said ‘good morning,’ in her rolling American English, the irony of us not having slept yet written all over her beaming face. 

She stepped in with a huge tray of food. Perfectly fried eggs sprinkled with saffron, warm bread and cups of sweet Persian tea. There were sides of yoghurt, butter and honey too - a midnight feast to give us energy on our all-nighter.

Mischievious

Instead of telling us off, Elina spurred us on. She watched us for a few minutes with a serene look on her face before retreating through the lounge and onto the balcony for a cigarette.

Leaving Elina, my other aunt Faizeh, cousins and grandmother was always an ordeal, the grim mood setting in 48 hours before my flight back to the UK. Many times I ditched school, college, or uni and delayed my flight home as I was unable to tear myself away from the abundant, all-consuming, loud, and unrelenting love I experienced with my family in Iran.

A decade after that joyful photo of my cousins was taken, my beautiful Elina was gone. The doctors had missed her breast cancer for nearly two years and by the time they diagnosed in 2004, it had already spread to her lymph nodes. She underwent a mastectomy and extensive chemotherapy, going into remission despite the severity and aggression of her tumours. But seven years later in the summer of 2011, the cancer spread to her bone marrow, putting her in hospital again and again.

Going downhill

When we spoke on the phone, all the light had gone from her voice. I booked a plane ticket to visit the following month but I was very ill myself. I had severe endometriosis, adhesions and ovarian cysts. I could barely sit from the pain, let alone travel thousands of miles. My consultant booked me in for surgery after Christmas. When I told Elina I couldn’t make it to Tehran as planned, she said, ‘it’s OK dokhtareh (girl), come and see me in the New Year when we’re both better.’

But just weeks after my surgery, Elina passed away aged 51, on 31 January 2012 - hours before her birthday. She left behind her son Arian 20, and her daughters Shaghayegh 10, and Shabnam, 9. Her loss was a giant hole punched through our family.

Elina’s funeral took place within two days and the mosque was packed with hundreds of mourners. People who knew her, loved her, and worked with her in Iran’s Ministry of Transport sent so many flowers, two lorries were needed to remove them from the building and the surrounding streets afterwards.

Goodbye

Her sister - my mum, Ellie - and I languished alone at home, away from everyone, missing Elina’s funeral and the closure we so badly needed. It was a grief upon grief to miss our final goodbye with Elina, the sheerzan - Farsi for lioness - who had once pulled a cabbie out of his car through the passenger window for daring to touch her thigh.

My mum and I mourned our loss together but her pain was so huge, I watched her jet black hair turn grey almost overnight. She’d shared a room with Elina from birth to 22, when my mum had left Iran to move to the UK.

After that, they’d talked every day, joking late into the night. So often, I’d hear my mum’s cackle in the air and Elina’s echoing on speakerphone. Despite Elina’s intense stubbornness, the only person she’d listen to without question was my mum. In return, the person my mum confided her soul to was Elina.

They had loved each other fiercely for over half a century. My love for Elina, despite being an entity itself, paled in significance. Mum told me, ‘how do I live in a world without Elina?’ There was no answer.

Pausing grief

To help Mum survive the immeasurable loss of her little sister and lifelong best friend, I took my grief for Elina and shoved it deep down. It meant I was unable to look at her beautiful face in pictures - be it online or in my mum’s house. When my mum’s older sister Faizeh tragically passed away two years later from bowel cancer, I was still numb, moving through the motions like a thick fog.

It wasn’t until lockdown when I started looking through photos of Elina that my Pandora’s box of grief blasted wide open. Miles away from the home I’d grown up in, my heart ached for Elina. Raw and painful, it was as if I’d lost her all over again. Tears came at random, meaningless moments - by the kitchen sink as I washed up, or when Amelia laughed and for a moment sounded like Elina. I told my husband and my best friend how amazing Elina had been, and recounted stories about her life.

The more I spoke about her, the more of Elina I needed. I wanted to look at every picture of Elina ever taken, and finally watch the home videos I’d avoided for eight years. ‘Please will you send them to me?’ I asked my dad, Majid. He spent hours digitising them and posted a DVD. I took my laptop upstairs, put my headphones in and clicked play.

Reconnecting

For the first 20 minutes, Elina dodged the camera, a long-running joke because she hated photos of her being taken. But eventually, she sat down and faced the camera. ‘Punteha,’ she said, looking directly into the camera, ‘when are you coming back here to me?’ It was clear in her voice that she loved me as much as I loved her. The floodgates opened.

Afterwards, I talked to my mum, her cousin Sepideh in Texas and my grandmother Mahin in Iran for hours about Elina. We shared our memories, hilarious stories spanning a lifetime of how sassy, generous and big-hearted she’d had been.

Sepideh, who’d flown from Texas to Iran to be there for Elina’s final hours, told me minute by minute how Elina had faded peacefully from our world, and the city-wide mourning and tributes for her; the way her and Faizeh had melted into giggles at the most awkward moment at the funeral, as memories of Elina who herself descended into laughter at the most inopportune moments flooded back to them.

I heard how despite Elina’s senior position at work, she’d insisted on pretending to be the tea-lady, so the real tea-lady could sit at Elina’s desk and tell her family she had a high-flying job. Elina had even quietly paid the school fees for six of her colleagues’ children for years. Whenever she went to a restaurant, Elina wouldn’t eat till she’d bought a meal for any homeless nearby first. 

Full circle

I listened to the tales about my Elina and for the first time since hitting pause on my grief, allowed myself to laugh about her, cry for her and heal.

Now, I often tell Amelia with pride why I named her after my aunt, that Elina was a force of nature, giving, stubborn, loving and kind. A sheerzan, who was loved and respected by everyone who met her, and how she lives on in me and Millie’s cackles, way of loving big - and always will.

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