I was 12-years-old when I first met Bibi Joon, my paternal grandmother. It was a dream come true. It was also my first trip to Iran. When I walked in the room, Bibi Joon was sitting against the wall, shoulder to shoulder with my grandfather (God rest his soul). I approached them, nervous and sweaty and introduced myself with a handshake. My grandfather pulled the arm I had extended towards him and embraced me in a huge hug. He looked me straight in the eyes and said that from then on I would refer to him as “Agha joon” and my grandmother as “Bibi joon”.  As the family poured into the main hall where they were sitting, relatives that I barely knew began preparing lunch. Bibi joon smiled and said that I needed to go help out. It didn’t matter that I had been absent for twelve years; I was a part of the family. It was an exhilarating feeling.
Born and raised in the U.S., I had always envied my peers who had their grandparents join them on “bring your grandparent to school day”. Or, those lucky kids who got picked up or dropped off by their grandfather or grandmother and were spoiled by them.
During my short visits to Iran, Bibi joon would always explain the importance of family and keeping in touch with one another. She would go down a list of aunts and uncles and if I hadn’t had a chance to call them in a while, she would dial the number and hand me the phone. During the call, she would whisper the names of the family members I should be enquiring about. She understood that I really didn’t know many of them.
Bibi joon kept an immaculate house. When I visited we would tackle a few of her home improvement projects. Together, we would carefully take down all her antiques and picture frames from the shelves in the living room, dust them, and then put them back up. Once we were done, she would sit on a pillow across the room, we would drink tea and admire our work. Ah, yes, making tea was an art she told me I had to master. It had to be the right temperature, brewed to the right strength and poured in very specific teacups accompanied by a matching saucer.
It's been two weeks since I got the terrible news that Bibi joon had passed away. I last saw her in March while visiting Iran. On previous visits, when we parted, she would hold me and quietly shed tears but I was confident I would see her again soon. This time around, while I was sitting in front of her, my heart ached. Something deep down told me that it would be the last time I would see her and feel her soft arms wrapped around me. I waited until I sat in the taxi outside her house before I started to weep.
Since I received the news, I have been trying hard to both remember and forget the lessons she taught me. I want to remember in order to pass them on to my children but I also want to forget the fact that her sweet voice and contagious laugh is no longer just a phone call away. Whenever we talked on the phone, I would always end with, “I’m sending you kisses from America all the way to Iran.” 
I wish we had more time together. I wish I called her more often. I wish we didn’t live in two totally different worlds where distance and language barriers prevented us from being closer.