So now I've lived through another Expat Experience. My grandmother died this week, and I was unable to attend either her deathbed or her funeral.
This was a fear that I had before I first moved away three years ago, to Prague. Except I was worried that it would happen with my father. (Still am, which is one of the reasons I don't want to settle in Australia.) I was seeing a counsellor at the time, who pointed out that I could be four blocks away from my father when he died and still be unable to say goodbye to him, so it wouldn't be so different if I were four thousand miles away, really.
Except that it is, of course. Of course it is. Had I been in Prague I might have missed Grandma's dying, but I could have least hopped on a plane and been back in seven hours, for the funeral. Sure, it would have cost a couple of hundred bucks, but you allow for things like that. And you can feasibly go from Europe to New York for a weekend. Being in Australia, though, means about 24 hours of transit, plus a couple of thousand dollars for a fare. And I'm already going back in another week for my father's birthday – exchanging a week of classes for five days of jetlag hell so I can be with him for his milestone party, tickets bought months ago in anticipation.
So like it or not, there was just no way for me to get back there. My family did their best to keep me involved. My aunt played my voicemail messages for Grandma in the hospital; she was being kept lightly sedated, but (I'm told) a tear ran down her cheek when she heard my voice. I was asked to write a little piece for the funeral, which my uncle read out for me. But would he get the timing right? Or the Yiddish pronunciations? It's not the same, having your words read out by someone else, someone who won't know exactly where the rhythm lies, where the pauses and the emphases go. It's not the same, knowing your words are being read out to people whose faces you can't see. It's not the same, knowing that everyone else in your family will share an experience that you won't.
"In a way it's good you didn't see her at the end," my mother said. "She was so frail and weak it would have broken your heart." But who cares how I would have felt? I would have sat there to hold her hand so she felt better, or at least not so scared, or so alone. I would have been there to make it easier for my aunt and my mother and my uncle: to get coffee, walk the dog, drive the car, find the nurse. I would have been there with my family at the cemetery, to watch them return the body of my last remaining grandparent to the earth, to put the pebbles on Grandpa's headstone, to gather with the surviving members of my shrinking family one more time. To say goodbye to my favourite grandma, who was buried wearing the black-and-white beaded necklace I made for her before I moved away.
I would have been there just to be there. But because of this life I chose, I could only be here.
There's audio for this post here.
When the dog bites
When the bee stings
When I'm feeling sad
I simply remember my favorite things
And then I don't feel so bad
It does not matter how closely I embrace my adopted homeland. It does not matter how many festivals I attend or how much local food I eat or how many collective hours I spend basking in the grand nature that is central Austria. Shopping for well made shoes or eating baroque desserts or striding about the meadows is not enough to fend it off. It hits and there is nothing to do but wait it out.
Homesickness is impossible to avoid. It’s like the common cold. It goes away in seven days if you do something about it and in a week if you don’t. If you’re lucky, that is, and it doesn’t move into your heart and create complications.
There is a great deal of glamour and romance attached to the idea of living in foreign lands. Some of it is true. Learning languages, the charm of the market, a wacky neighbor who takes a liking to you just because you’re from Somewhere Else. Got all that. Check. But.
If you haven’t lived it, you get the idea it’s all Under the Tuscan Sun. That movie makes me want to kill myself. Plus, notice how at the end, she hooks up with the guy from her own country? And I didn’t read the book, but I couldn’t help but wonder where she got all the money from so she could sit in some picturesque town in the middle of Italian nowhere without a local job. Is she telecommuting? Have you used Italian internet service in a small town? Frances Mayes can kiss my ass. So can that guy who wrote A Year in Provence. Bite me, Peter Mayle.
It is very hard on our household when I get like this. I start making mental lists of all the things that are wrong with Austria. They’re not really about Austria, though, they’re about what’s wrong with me. All the items fall under one general heading that goes something like this: I am not a 20 something domestic with visions of raising offspring in a bucolic small town. Or, to simplify even further, square peg, meet round hole.
Things would be easier if I was a big fish in a small pond kind of person. I could get all self important about Being An Artist and work that angle. “Look, there goes that American artist!” That idea leaves me fairly frosty. Not that I’m some genius painter – it’s more that I was surrounded by genius painters once and I know what it looks like. This ain't it. Even with adjusting for geography.
Homesickness is an ugly, disfiguring disease that leaves me apologizing for its ravages on my appearance. And, it’s got all this underlying guilt with it – “Have you really TRIED to make friends?” “Have you really TRIED to find community?” “Have you really TRIED to find work?” “Have you really TRIED?!” The response to all those questions is none other than a hearty f*ck off. Because what else is there? “Join a club. Take a class. Volunteer.” “Excuse me, but f*ck off.”
I suppose I could eat enough to fill the places in the round hole. Or I could trim bits off myself to make myself round. Both of those are pretty bad ideas, plus, honestly, I don’t really want to change the things that make me a square peg. It’s tough. I feel unfriendly and closed and stuck up because what I have isn’t good enough for me. And even though I hurl myself full speed at everything that is life here, I don’t feel successful at becoming part of it. I feel like a failure.
I want my friends. I want a big spicy bowl of pho. I want my studio where I’m working on wax and oil paintings of - oh, it’s surprise. I want to drop in on people without a formal invitation and I want them to drop in on me. I want to look out the window at the rain and ask, “Okay, which slacker friend is going to the matinees with me today?” I want piles of green vegetables. I want a tattooed barista to make my coffee. I want Seattle.
Face it, sometimes, remembering your favorite things makes you feel like crap.