Sitting at the Ataturk Airport Gate 205 waiting lounge again, I watched the airplanes take off and land every few minutes. My second arrival at Istanbul was on this peaceful late afternoon. Golden sunshine passed through the glass wall silently, bringing in warmth and hope. Yet it could not light up the big dark hole in my heart. The profound emptiness hit me without alarm. I felt its crudeness, coldness and sorrow.
I bid Sinan farewell at the departure counter point just now. The elevator took me higher and higher. I turned back, looking into Sinan’s direction, until his face disappeared at distance. Then the tears dropped ceaselessly. I knew I was on my own again.
This was too much for me to take, my beloved ISSYP fellows. Send you off group by group, cry painfully in each last cuddle, hugg use all the strength I had, and smile at much as I could with tears on my face. This was the most sorrowful day I have ever had. The REV was so quiet and dessert after you left. It was awful to walk through the long corridors in WC, scanning through the name tags on the doors, knowing that you have gone and would no longer walk out to say hi to me. Then your sad faces before departure reappeared in my mind again, pressing my heart to the endless extreme.
I felt that every one of you were still by my side. Waiting at the airport in Toronto, I kept hearing some voices calling “Yangfan, Yangfan”. I would mistake the distant figures as Austin, Kurous or Charlene. Kirian, Sinan and me talked about the shared jokes among us, yet in the end we fell in silence, missing the time we had together. Then we sent Kirian to the departure gate. Then I waved Sinan goodbye.
I missed every one of you. I am missing every one of you. Indeed, those wonderful moments we would never have again. Yet I am so grateful of keeping the sweet memories, inscribing the details on my heart. Because I met you, my summer became extraordinary. I remember our laughters, jokes, conversations and mischivies. They will be part of the most beautiful pages in the book of my life.
