Nask's cancer & child college fund
Donation protected
Almost 14 years ago, on a late summer afternoon, a petite 4 year-old girl skipped into my yard with her long wavy brown hair and blue dress carelessly flying in the wake of her adventure seeking heart. Curiosity about my 3 year-old son and our hyperactive Chihuahua brought her in to our small yard, of which its intimate nature lent itself to the pup (whom we named Pele due to his obsession with soccer balls and feet) to immediately notice her, bark wildly, then nip and tug at her white lace bobby socks. She didn’t flinch or say much at first, but rather bravely giggled and glanced up at my face periodically for reassurance that the “vicious” little dog with the big dog attitude would not hurt her. I was impressed that she boldly walked into our yard and decided to make us a part of her life.
She quickly sized us up with her big brown eyes, decided we'd be friends, and sealed that deal by asking me for some ice cream. For the next 4 years, she and my son were inseparable. They would play in the sprinkler, chase the dogs, spook each other with ghost stories during sleepovers, and try to outbrave each other by seeing how close each could get to the “haunted” lonely house at the end of a nearby wooded driveway before running away. Their friendship was easy and had a sibling-like quality to it.
They wandered our small neighborhood (one street) with carefree abandonment. I was sad to see that end when I remarried, became pregnant again and had to move across the neighborhood to a larger townhouse more suitable for our growing family, because soon after the day little Beryan had “adopted” us, I met her mother, Nask. She was an unassuming woman with dark curly hair, a sweet smile, and rounded nose that nearly curled down over her top lip if she smiled big and wide enough. She spoke softly in her Kurdish accent, was smart as a whip and she was funny. I liked her immediately and we became fast friends.
During those 4 years living on the same street, we spent many days sending our children back and forth to each other’s homes to play. She invited me over for tea often. She knew I was a newly divorced mother and I sensed she made it a point to include me in her home to help me transition into singlehood in a less lonely way.
Nask and her husband came to the USA a few years earlier as political refugees. It was a new start and they were embracing American life. I was so impressed how their family of four (she and her husband, their daughter and son) not only adapted well to the American way, but had also made room for her brother-in-law to live with them rent free in their crowded 3 bedroom condo. Caged canaries sang pretty songs when you walked into their house and the air always smelled of something delicious cooking, or burning incense. Your senses were filled! Nask was always inviting me over for some of her home cooked food. Often, I would find her holding a pot of something yummy on my doorstep. I loved the recipes she cooked from her home country, Kurdistan. All the delicious spices, and the nuts, and afternoon tea, oh the dark leaved tea!
Nask was always happy to share what she had, and most of the time that was her smile. I was smitten with her coy sense of humor, and the relaxed way about her. Nothing rattled her style. She was honest. She was positive. And she rolled with the flow. She invited me to her parties where I had trouble, as an American woman, pronouncing some of the names of those to whom she introduced to me, but she lovingly forgave me and would pull me by my arm to join her and her Kurdish sisters in laughter and a dance on her living room floor. Arms around each other’s shoulders in a circle, I loved the energy and to hear the foreign sounds roll off their tongues as they sang their songs. Back and forth, their words sounded so sassy while they laughed and shimmied in their beaded waist wraps.
Eventually, Nask also moved out of our old neighborhood and into a townhome and again into a larger single family home. Though we were always a town away from each other, our friendship remained strong through the years, and our children continued to see each other on occasion, picking up where they had left off, with ease. (This week, I will be taking the two of them out for dinner together to celebrate my son’s 16th birthday. Time has flown much too quickly.)
Like the rest of us, Nask had the American dream in her heart. She desired security and comfort for her family so she took a job as a translator for the United States government in Afghanistan during the war. The money was good and would help her achieve her dreams faster than she had ever imagined. She worked overseas for 2 years, away from her children and husband, serving our country. I remember her stories of her countless hours sitting in hot barracks and hearing distant gunfire at times. She had missed her children very much. I recall thinking that I would never have her strength to endure two years away from my family in a war torn country. I admired her tenacity and quietly recognized her sacrifice and strength to which my own would never compare. I would later learn while watching her fight her cancer how true that really was.
I am a foodie at heart. My palate doesn’t discriminate. I already miss Nask’s cooking. The last meal she ever cooked for me, before she lost her joie de vivre in the kitchen was just a few weeks ago, before she could no longer eat at all anymore. It was a plate of vegetables and rice wrapped with grape leaves, one of my favorites. I shared that afternoon meal with her daughter, ex sister-in-law and a close friend. They spoke mostly Kurdish to each other and Nask translated it for me while we ate the vegetables, rice, fresh mint leaves and nuts. She had just recovered from her first surgery and she was full of hope. She was still tired sitting at the end of the table in her robe and soft hat, but smiling and happy to host for us. It was like the old days and it will always be my favorite meal with her. I remember the earlier days of sitting in my kitchen rolling rice and spiced meat into the grape leaves alongside her. She had come to teach me how to make them. The process of making them was almost as majestic as eating them. I am grateful she has shared her recipes with me; grateful that she gifted to me fresh spices directly from her country after returning from a visit there; grateful that she ever stood in a little market in Northern Iraq 6,000 miles away from Virginia and thought of me as she purchased a necklace, handcarved with my name written in Kurdish. She is an amazing friend.
Life in America had been good to her and her family briefly. They were blessed with good jobs, new cars, new homes and even a boat on which they entertained friends and their families during the weekends at Lake Anna. Suddenly our children became young adults. We joked about our aging ailments. Little did we know.
Somewhere along the way, 8 friendship years in, the good life began to change. I hate the saying that all good things must come to an end. (Probably because I know it to be true.) And they certainly did.
The change was so subtle at first that I think we can only see it now, looking back, for what it truly was. (It’s like pulling the plug out of the drain. The water sucks down slowly at first. Or maybe it’s just as fast but we don’t notice it right away because there is so much water in the tub to begin. But then, like time, the water eventually runs low, and suddenly you’re seeing the fast swirling vortex of water quickly sucking down the drain. With less resistance, it gets faster and faster and little sucks of air from the pipes escape as the last of the water gets dragged down into the abyss of the unknown. You HEAR the power of the suck. And you quickly search to be sure that nothing else goes down with it like bath toys, washcloths, little fingers and toes, or your hope. Yes, CANCER IS THE SUCK.)
Their American dream grew larger than their hands could hold, and the market crashed and soon the house and the boat were gone. Life became challenging and its pressure fractured her marriage. Nask would not take a job outside of the country only to end up leaving her children again, so instead she took a job locally as a bank teller to support her kids. She carried great pride with her ability to successfully manage her finances and rebuild her life, though she struggled emotionally with all that had transpired to put her back at square one again, and this time, without her husband. However, she was a proud woman. And she celebrated her life, grateful to have her health and her children, as she often said of these things while looking skyward, “Thanks to God.”
Her son eventually moved out and back to their country to work. Nask continued to work hard to support herself and her teenage daughter until last June, when she began to not feel very well. By August, after several visits to the doctors and some testing, they discovered she had stage 4 gall bladder cancer. They did surgery to remove her gall bladder, but found some cancer in surrounding tissue and lymph nodes. Over the course of the next 4 months they aggressively treated her with weeks of chemo, then weeks of radiation. Her scans showed a favorable reaction because they appeared to slow the growing cancer, but then a new challenge struck.
Suddenly she was not able to eat or pass food. Doctors performed surgery to reconnect a new path for her stomach to her intestines. The surgery not only failed, but they discovered that the cancer had rapidly begun to spread throughout her abdomen. Tumors were clamping down on her digestive tract. The scans had been misleading. After 2 months of not being able to eat she continued to hold onto her hope that the doctors would find a way to fix it, and that she would one day begin receiving chemo therapy again to slow down her growing cancer. Though her body was weak and she was in and out of hospitals, her will to live remained strong.
(I should mention here the sad irony that cooking and eating delicious food, which had connected us, was now literally off the table. The taste of delicious food upon her tongue can be no more as the ravages of cancer have reduced her body to being nourished from bags of milky sustenance going directly into her intestines via tubes. It breaks my heart that our time together in the kitchen is now just a memory. When my dear friend passes on, I plan to prepare one of her delicious recipes with her daughter, over which we will sit and slowly savor and talk of the times we spent laughing over one of her tasty dishes in happier times. I will toast my drink to our friendship and I will fill my belly with joyful memories.)
While Nask struggled with her deteriorating health, I wondered how her daughter, now 17, managed to attend high school during the day (passing AP courses), work a job all evening to help earn money, then come home late to finish her homework, only to wake another day and repeat again. Then I realize that she is her mother’s daughter. Nask has spoken often of her dream for her daughter to go to college. She has cried over the uncertainty of this dream and her inability to help make it happen.
Weak and unable to work, Nask has spent many days at home on her couch, upset that she could no longer support her daughter. She has struggled with having to receive state assistance to pay her basic bills. She has also missed her extended family terribly, who live overseas.
Today I held her hand in her oncologist’s office as he explained to her in the most gentle of ways, that he had reached a place in her treatment that would not be able to extend her life beyond another 2 months. And as I sat there holding her hand, I felt her last shred of hope and energy and lightness of being she had carried in her heart these past few months, diminish. I watched her eyes dim and go flat, I watched her body sag and go limp. It felt like a letting go. Like holding a balloon to the sky and releasing it out and up to the unknown. Handing it over to whatever forces will carry it away and beyond, out of our control. I heard her wail of fear and sadness escape her mouth over and over. I will never be able to explain it. It is a deep and sad and dark feeling. Without hope, I worry about where will she channel her heart and her mind during her remaining days. How can I give her a focus? A purpose? How can I help her make that time count?
She leaves her legacy in the heart of her teenage daughter. Several times I held Nask as she cried about the worries only a mother would have over leaving her daughter alone in this world. Tears of guilt and lament that she would not see her daughter grow up or fall in love, or even be able to ensure that her daughter was protected and happy. Worry that her daughter would never have a home base to come back to while she went out into the world to explore her young life.
I want to heal this hurt for her. I want to ease her motherly worries. If I could raise money for her daughter’s future education during the last couple months of Nask’s life, I pray it may give her some peace of mind. If I could collect enough money to help get her daughter through college so that she can go on to fulfill her dream, it might give my friend’s troubled heart a break. Maybe it could even help renew her spirit.
Nask has remarked that she had hopes for her daughter to have the ability to study and pursue a career as a chemical engineer. I hope her daughter can someday. But ultimately, my friend’s biggest wish is for her daughter to grow up safe and happy.
There is no way I could ever repay my dear friend with the generous spirit she has shown me for the past 14 years, but if I could return to her even the briefest glitter of hope and belief that her daughter’s future is a secure one, I will be happy to know that her soul rests easy and she can pass into the heavens saying, “Thanks to God.”
Just like that first day when that brave little girl walked boldly into my yard; I’d like, on her mother’s last day, with the help of your financial donations, to send that same young woman boldly out into the world, secure and just as brave. And in return, I hope the world gives her ice cream.
I would be ever so grateful if you share this story for me.
She quickly sized us up with her big brown eyes, decided we'd be friends, and sealed that deal by asking me for some ice cream. For the next 4 years, she and my son were inseparable. They would play in the sprinkler, chase the dogs, spook each other with ghost stories during sleepovers, and try to outbrave each other by seeing how close each could get to the “haunted” lonely house at the end of a nearby wooded driveway before running away. Their friendship was easy and had a sibling-like quality to it.
They wandered our small neighborhood (one street) with carefree abandonment. I was sad to see that end when I remarried, became pregnant again and had to move across the neighborhood to a larger townhouse more suitable for our growing family, because soon after the day little Beryan had “adopted” us, I met her mother, Nask. She was an unassuming woman with dark curly hair, a sweet smile, and rounded nose that nearly curled down over her top lip if she smiled big and wide enough. She spoke softly in her Kurdish accent, was smart as a whip and she was funny. I liked her immediately and we became fast friends.
During those 4 years living on the same street, we spent many days sending our children back and forth to each other’s homes to play. She invited me over for tea often. She knew I was a newly divorced mother and I sensed she made it a point to include me in her home to help me transition into singlehood in a less lonely way.
Nask and her husband came to the USA a few years earlier as political refugees. It was a new start and they were embracing American life. I was so impressed how their family of four (she and her husband, their daughter and son) not only adapted well to the American way, but had also made room for her brother-in-law to live with them rent free in their crowded 3 bedroom condo. Caged canaries sang pretty songs when you walked into their house and the air always smelled of something delicious cooking, or burning incense. Your senses were filled! Nask was always inviting me over for some of her home cooked food. Often, I would find her holding a pot of something yummy on my doorstep. I loved the recipes she cooked from her home country, Kurdistan. All the delicious spices, and the nuts, and afternoon tea, oh the dark leaved tea!
Nask was always happy to share what she had, and most of the time that was her smile. I was smitten with her coy sense of humor, and the relaxed way about her. Nothing rattled her style. She was honest. She was positive. And she rolled with the flow. She invited me to her parties where I had trouble, as an American woman, pronouncing some of the names of those to whom she introduced to me, but she lovingly forgave me and would pull me by my arm to join her and her Kurdish sisters in laughter and a dance on her living room floor. Arms around each other’s shoulders in a circle, I loved the energy and to hear the foreign sounds roll off their tongues as they sang their songs. Back and forth, their words sounded so sassy while they laughed and shimmied in their beaded waist wraps.
Eventually, Nask also moved out of our old neighborhood and into a townhome and again into a larger single family home. Though we were always a town away from each other, our friendship remained strong through the years, and our children continued to see each other on occasion, picking up where they had left off, with ease. (This week, I will be taking the two of them out for dinner together to celebrate my son’s 16th birthday. Time has flown much too quickly.)
Like the rest of us, Nask had the American dream in her heart. She desired security and comfort for her family so she took a job as a translator for the United States government in Afghanistan during the war. The money was good and would help her achieve her dreams faster than she had ever imagined. She worked overseas for 2 years, away from her children and husband, serving our country. I remember her stories of her countless hours sitting in hot barracks and hearing distant gunfire at times. She had missed her children very much. I recall thinking that I would never have her strength to endure two years away from my family in a war torn country. I admired her tenacity and quietly recognized her sacrifice and strength to which my own would never compare. I would later learn while watching her fight her cancer how true that really was.
I am a foodie at heart. My palate doesn’t discriminate. I already miss Nask’s cooking. The last meal she ever cooked for me, before she lost her joie de vivre in the kitchen was just a few weeks ago, before she could no longer eat at all anymore. It was a plate of vegetables and rice wrapped with grape leaves, one of my favorites. I shared that afternoon meal with her daughter, ex sister-in-law and a close friend. They spoke mostly Kurdish to each other and Nask translated it for me while we ate the vegetables, rice, fresh mint leaves and nuts. She had just recovered from her first surgery and she was full of hope. She was still tired sitting at the end of the table in her robe and soft hat, but smiling and happy to host for us. It was like the old days and it will always be my favorite meal with her. I remember the earlier days of sitting in my kitchen rolling rice and spiced meat into the grape leaves alongside her. She had come to teach me how to make them. The process of making them was almost as majestic as eating them. I am grateful she has shared her recipes with me; grateful that she gifted to me fresh spices directly from her country after returning from a visit there; grateful that she ever stood in a little market in Northern Iraq 6,000 miles away from Virginia and thought of me as she purchased a necklace, handcarved with my name written in Kurdish. She is an amazing friend.
Life in America had been good to her and her family briefly. They were blessed with good jobs, new cars, new homes and even a boat on which they entertained friends and their families during the weekends at Lake Anna. Suddenly our children became young adults. We joked about our aging ailments. Little did we know.
Somewhere along the way, 8 friendship years in, the good life began to change. I hate the saying that all good things must come to an end. (Probably because I know it to be true.) And they certainly did.
The change was so subtle at first that I think we can only see it now, looking back, for what it truly was. (It’s like pulling the plug out of the drain. The water sucks down slowly at first. Or maybe it’s just as fast but we don’t notice it right away because there is so much water in the tub to begin. But then, like time, the water eventually runs low, and suddenly you’re seeing the fast swirling vortex of water quickly sucking down the drain. With less resistance, it gets faster and faster and little sucks of air from the pipes escape as the last of the water gets dragged down into the abyss of the unknown. You HEAR the power of the suck. And you quickly search to be sure that nothing else goes down with it like bath toys, washcloths, little fingers and toes, or your hope. Yes, CANCER IS THE SUCK.)
Their American dream grew larger than their hands could hold, and the market crashed and soon the house and the boat were gone. Life became challenging and its pressure fractured her marriage. Nask would not take a job outside of the country only to end up leaving her children again, so instead she took a job locally as a bank teller to support her kids. She carried great pride with her ability to successfully manage her finances and rebuild her life, though she struggled emotionally with all that had transpired to put her back at square one again, and this time, without her husband. However, she was a proud woman. And she celebrated her life, grateful to have her health and her children, as she often said of these things while looking skyward, “Thanks to God.”
Her son eventually moved out and back to their country to work. Nask continued to work hard to support herself and her teenage daughter until last June, when she began to not feel very well. By August, after several visits to the doctors and some testing, they discovered she had stage 4 gall bladder cancer. They did surgery to remove her gall bladder, but found some cancer in surrounding tissue and lymph nodes. Over the course of the next 4 months they aggressively treated her with weeks of chemo, then weeks of radiation. Her scans showed a favorable reaction because they appeared to slow the growing cancer, but then a new challenge struck.
Suddenly she was not able to eat or pass food. Doctors performed surgery to reconnect a new path for her stomach to her intestines. The surgery not only failed, but they discovered that the cancer had rapidly begun to spread throughout her abdomen. Tumors were clamping down on her digestive tract. The scans had been misleading. After 2 months of not being able to eat she continued to hold onto her hope that the doctors would find a way to fix it, and that she would one day begin receiving chemo therapy again to slow down her growing cancer. Though her body was weak and she was in and out of hospitals, her will to live remained strong.
(I should mention here the sad irony that cooking and eating delicious food, which had connected us, was now literally off the table. The taste of delicious food upon her tongue can be no more as the ravages of cancer have reduced her body to being nourished from bags of milky sustenance going directly into her intestines via tubes. It breaks my heart that our time together in the kitchen is now just a memory. When my dear friend passes on, I plan to prepare one of her delicious recipes with her daughter, over which we will sit and slowly savor and talk of the times we spent laughing over one of her tasty dishes in happier times. I will toast my drink to our friendship and I will fill my belly with joyful memories.)
While Nask struggled with her deteriorating health, I wondered how her daughter, now 17, managed to attend high school during the day (passing AP courses), work a job all evening to help earn money, then come home late to finish her homework, only to wake another day and repeat again. Then I realize that she is her mother’s daughter. Nask has spoken often of her dream for her daughter to go to college. She has cried over the uncertainty of this dream and her inability to help make it happen.
Weak and unable to work, Nask has spent many days at home on her couch, upset that she could no longer support her daughter. She has struggled with having to receive state assistance to pay her basic bills. She has also missed her extended family terribly, who live overseas.
Today I held her hand in her oncologist’s office as he explained to her in the most gentle of ways, that he had reached a place in her treatment that would not be able to extend her life beyond another 2 months. And as I sat there holding her hand, I felt her last shred of hope and energy and lightness of being she had carried in her heart these past few months, diminish. I watched her eyes dim and go flat, I watched her body sag and go limp. It felt like a letting go. Like holding a balloon to the sky and releasing it out and up to the unknown. Handing it over to whatever forces will carry it away and beyond, out of our control. I heard her wail of fear and sadness escape her mouth over and over. I will never be able to explain it. It is a deep and sad and dark feeling. Without hope, I worry about where will she channel her heart and her mind during her remaining days. How can I give her a focus? A purpose? How can I help her make that time count?
She leaves her legacy in the heart of her teenage daughter. Several times I held Nask as she cried about the worries only a mother would have over leaving her daughter alone in this world. Tears of guilt and lament that she would not see her daughter grow up or fall in love, or even be able to ensure that her daughter was protected and happy. Worry that her daughter would never have a home base to come back to while she went out into the world to explore her young life.
I want to heal this hurt for her. I want to ease her motherly worries. If I could raise money for her daughter’s future education during the last couple months of Nask’s life, I pray it may give her some peace of mind. If I could collect enough money to help get her daughter through college so that she can go on to fulfill her dream, it might give my friend’s troubled heart a break. Maybe it could even help renew her spirit.
Nask has remarked that she had hopes for her daughter to have the ability to study and pursue a career as a chemical engineer. I hope her daughter can someday. But ultimately, my friend’s biggest wish is for her daughter to grow up safe and happy.
There is no way I could ever repay my dear friend with the generous spirit she has shown me for the past 14 years, but if I could return to her even the briefest glitter of hope and belief that her daughter’s future is a secure one, I will be happy to know that her soul rests easy and she can pass into the heavens saying, “Thanks to God.”
Just like that first day when that brave little girl walked boldly into my yard; I’d like, on her mother’s last day, with the help of your financial donations, to send that same young woman boldly out into the world, secure and just as brave. And in return, I hope the world gives her ice cream.
I would be ever so grateful if you share this story for me.
Organizer
Heather Boucher
Organizer
Chantilly, VA