my mom called last monday and gave me the news. when i heard her stalling on the other end of the line and quietly asking me i’d heard yet, my hands started shaking and my body started convulsing in horror of what news she had called to deliver. something had happened, someone had died.

she delivered the news with the quiet choking in her voice that echoed the pain she was enduring in keeping the family together and delivering support to those in need while she desperately needed it herself. her mother was on her death bed, waiting to be sent off. in the mean while, the same day, my brother’s two month old baby had been retrieved to intensive care due to sudden discovery of Leukemia. in the mean time my dad was sailing the high seas somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic, far out of range.

i have made my life very complicated at some point. i have wondered about my life decisions more lately as i have gotten older. for years i somehow thought i would grow out of this and i would happily move back to Finland to share a life with my family and be there to support them when they needed someone to lean on. i’m in agony over the simple truth that my family is growing up and growing older and i am missing the best part of their lives by choosing to live half way across the globe. i have tried to make myself to move back to Finland, or at least moving closer somewhere in Europe. but when ever the reality of moving away from the northwest corner of the united states came calling, i have always found myself tucking tail and anchoring down. i have come to realize that i can’t, don’t want to, live my life any other way that how i am now, but at the same time live in constant torment over the distance i have put between myself and my family.

i have a wonderful family that i miss and love very much. i would hope to someday have a travel fund set a side that would allow me to come to their aid when ever something rough happened.

the hardest thing about receiving these news from anyone in your family is hearing the pain in their voice and knowing how badly they just need someone to stand by them, just to see them through. and i can’t help the fact that i feel like i am deserting my family by not being able to do absolutely anything, but to hold the phone and try to send them my blessings. it makes me feel horribly helpless and guilty. what will i do when the person i love the most in this world gets older and it’s her turn to receive support from her family? not the mention how angry i will be with myself that i never got to share my life with my mother? i know they never hold it against me and my mother, most of all, wants me to be happy. and she knows i am.