Jazmin Schiff

If you know me, you know I was never a mama’s girl or a daddy’s girl. I have always belonged to my grandmother. Speaking about you is still too heavy for me, so I turn to the only thing that lets me feel you near: I write to you, Mamani.

Mamani, on Wednesday, November 12, 2025, you left us.
I hurt knowing I wasn’t there to hold your hand,
the same hand that carried me through every season of my life.
That empty space beside your hospital bed with no one beside you in Tehran haunts me. I wish I could have been there with you.
I keep wondering if I could’ve done more.
One more prayer, one more flight, one more plea to keep you with us just a little longer.

The hospital failed you, and the doctors failed to see your pain.
But in the midst of that neglect, I find a small aching comfort knowing you returned to the soil that shaped you.
You took your final breath in your motherland.

You were the guardian of my childhood.
You raised me through the most fragile years.
Years when I had to relearn my roots, my language, myself.
You stood beside me as I stumbled through Farsi, as I tried to fit into a world that felt both mine and not mine.
You were my courage when I had none, my voice when I had no words, my warmth when my 9 year old world felt cold and unfamiliar.
You protected the spark of “American” in me while teaching me the poetry of Iran. You were and always will be a true shirzan,a lioness of the heart.

My favorite memories are our Tuesdays together. 4 years of small rituals,our own version of Tuesdays with Morrie.
Backgammon boards you’d always win. Your stories filling the room. The smell of my favorite Iranian dishes filling the air. Those Tuesdays were more than days, they were home.

Since you left, messages have been coming in from every corner. From our Iranian friends, my American friends. From people who couldn’t speak your language but somehow understood your love. You bridged worlds without ever needing words.

Mamani, I will carry you with me always.
I don’t know what waits on the other side of death, but I do know this. Your light didn’t leave with your body. Your soul follows me everywhere,
soft and certain, forever my guiding light 🕊️🤍