Closing The Chasm
How do you connect with a family you rarely see? Monika Radojevic explores the tenderness of love when it’s scattered across the globe.
There’s a way my friends speak about their extended family, especially their grandparents, that ignites a gnawing jealously inside of me. I still remember one of my best friends mentioning to me years ago that she’d spent every Sunday with her grandparents as a child, her grandmother becoming an extension of her mother. There was an assured serenity in the way she described it; the certainty of knowing that when Sunday rolled around, she’d be there. Another recounted family birthdays with the entire family – both sides! – packed into a stuffy room, the mutual language and shared points of reference allowing them to blend together with the ease of watercolours. I found – still find – the idea hard to grasp. My entire family have never and will never, be in the same room all at the same time.
When I think about familial love, I think about yearning. About long stretches of time that pass both incredibly slowly and breathtakingly fast, so that by the time you meet again you’re a little disoriented, not sure how much to say. It’s like returning to your childhood bedroom to find everything in its place, but something is off-kilter; the walls are a different colour, or there’s an unfamiliar smell in the air.
“My entire family have never and will never, be in the same room all at the same time.”
That’s what it can feel like to love grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins from a distance. Harder still, when your family are scattered around the globe like puzzle pieces from an unfinished jigsaw, and you’re in the middle, disconnected from either end.
Born in the UK, I’m what’s known as a third-culture kid; a term open to interpretation but generally describing someone whose parents come from two separate countries, both different from the one you grew up in. In my case, that’s Brazil and Montenegro.
My love for both countries is bound up in a complex ball of grief, pride, utter joy and the constant need to validate my splintered existence. Something has always been missing, no matter where I am. As I get older, that “something” has become family and the gradual, gaping holes their passing leaves behind.
The last time I saw my grandma, my Baba, in Montenegro, we both cried unexpectedly and violently as I said goodbye to return to England. I knew then, it would be the last time I would see her; she died less than a year later. A stroke meant that she was no longer able to speak except for one word: znam, meaning, “I know”. As I left, the last words I said to her was that I loved her. She replied, “I know.”
A few years later, my beloved Brazilian grandparents both passed within a year of each other. A combination of steep travel costs, school exams and work meant I had not been able to see them for several years. At the time, my grief was muted by concern for my parent’s heartbreak, especially my mother’s, whose cry when she picked up the phone to hear her mother had died will stay with me forever.
“It is impossibly hard to sum up a year of your life into a handful of conversations, ”
Their loss took a shamefully long time to register. After all, life in London continued as normal, and I was accustomed to rarely being able to hug or talk to my grandparents. The biggest change–aside from my parents’ sorrow–was the end of our long-distance phone calls, peppered with moments of silence as I searched for a word in my second or third language, my parents mouthing and miming in the periphery.
When you see your family once a year (or less) it is unavoidable that a chasm remains stubbornly open between you, despite the fierce and shared love illuminating your visit like a rising sun. Neither of you understand the intricacies of the other person’s daily life; how you take your coffee, what music they like, what brings joy to you both. It is impossibly hard, after all, to sum up a year of your life into a handful of conversations, let alone trying to do it in languages slowly fading from the muscle memory of your tongue.
I understand if I’m giving the impression of being wrapped up in misery over this all, but this isn’t fully true. There is nothing that can compare to the absolute pleasure of the blended languages, cultures and memories I am lucky enough to possess. Or the privilege of having spent my childhood years in Brazil for Christmas and summers in Montenegro. However, the older I get, the further my loved ones inch away from my outstretched fingers and the wider the chasm grows.
“There is only ever joy when our far-flung families learn we’re making the journey to visit them.”
I am hoping and planning against significant odds to visit both of my countries this year. It will have been nine years since I last went back to Brazil, five years since I visited Montenegro; the biggest gaps in my life so far. Both journeys will be a measure of how much has changed since the last visit, as well as how unshakeable our familial love remains. There is only ever joy when our far-flung families learn we’re making the journey to visit them, and never direct blame when they know we aren’t. My only fear is how bittersweet the return will feel; not everyone will be there to greet me.
Although I’m leaving my future in the hands of fate, if I ever have children, I hope not to live more than an hour away from my mum and dad. I am intent on closing the chasm once and for all, determined for my entire future family to one day be in the same room, all at the same time.