I WAS SPEECHLESS, and I STILL AM. BUT…..

My feelings in picture!

By: h. nazan ışık—

24 December 2021—

My one and only brother called me from Turkey: “Sister I have been diagnosed with cancer, Pancreatic cancer it is.”

It sounded like a sudden thunderstorm.

I was I was shocked, I was speechless!

I saw my face in the mirror on the wall. It wasn’t my face I saw, it was something like this.

Shocked, and speechless!

It became my tool, expressing my feelings not with words but images again. It was 1994, when my parents died six mounts apart from each other photograph had become my best friend to talk about my pain.

I cried.

I went to Turkey to be with him.
While we were approaching Istanbul airport,

I saw water drops on the window. The sky was crying with me too.

He had a surgery, The Whipple procedure,  and everything was removed. Chemotherapy started.

Doctors were happy and hopeful. But a red flag was always there.

I came back to New York.
The bad news came. Cancer spread to the liver, liver metastases!

I cried again.

Wanted to go to Turkey again. I couldn’t, because of Covid-19.

I was stuck; I was the prisoner of Covid-19. Couldn’t go. I screamed in agony.

I received a phone call that my brother died on 24 December 2020. Couldn’t see him.

What I felt was severe coldness…everything, every organ in my body was frozen. My brain, my blood, my heart.

The pain I felt was tremendous, like a rusty, not a sharp metal, a very rusty metal, very slowly piercing my brain, my heart, my lungs, my spine. I was bleeding inside.

Hopelessness, sadness, pain, agony, despair, feeling a terrible sense of loss. This was how I felt my face was.

I cried more…

….to the point I couldn’t cry anymore.

This picture, taken in late 1970’s, breaks my heart the most. I was on a bus going somewhere, my mom, my brother and my dad wishing me a joyful trip.

And now it looks like, THEY were saying good-bye to me. The last “Farewell” it feels like.

And sadly they are all gone! R.I.P all !

My heart became like a stone. Senselessness, numbness filled my heart.
There is a saying: “Time is the best medicine”.
It is just a saying, I say! I lost my mom and dad 27 years ago, and I still hear their voices…

“ Nothing works unless you do”

— Maya Angelou

One day I saw three birds, like a family, were flying together freely, happily, in that cloudless, open blue sky. Made me imagine that they were my loved ones.; My father, my mother and my brother!

I felt better……

Photos © h. nazan ışık

© h. nazan ışık / NKENdiKEN