Maa Dearest

2020

Four years have passed since - four mother’s days - since I last saw you. 

I do still reminisce the card which said “home is where mom is.” I still try to carry around some piece of you around with me wherever I go, but I’m no longer running in circles. I know where home is. It’s always been where I could collapse into your warmth; it will always be that place even if it means I would have to coax the warmth out of every leaf and every wall you have ever touched. 

I understand how every ring you ever laid your hands on have a memory of you resting within. All I can do is just dive in and be enveloped. All I can do is preserve and protect the aura, and maybe dissipate myself into it- to reinforce it with every breath of mine. 

Throughout most of our life together, it was always about how we were different people doing different things. With more and more years between us now, those differences begin to fade. There’s more things alike than I thought, more things alike than you would have known. 

Your absence doesn’t feel like a fresh wound anymore. Pain doesn’t spike up suddenly leaving me empty. Reminiscing you, missing you is an involuntary action now. But so is honouring you, honouring your memory. 

The feeling of this gaping void and loss lessens with time. The more I step into your memory and your strength, the loss lessens. Everything I know about how to love and how to live - I’ve learned from you, and I succumb to it more and more. This way you don’t feel so far away. 

Your essence flows in us, in things you’ve touched, in places you’ve lived and in people you’ve loved. 

I no longer search endlessly for warmth; I am now sensitive to it. I know the warmth lives in the laburnum tree. I feel it every time it flowers - it does flower like I’d promised you it will; it just needed time. 

I do miss you with all I have. Every breathing moment. Some emotions don’t stop. 

I don’t resist it. 

I don’t drown in it.

I know that’s not the way to be.

I let if flow. Out of me, into the things you’ve loved. 

I know I didn’t bring you many flowers then. I nurture all the flowers you’d planted now. And I know that it is enough. 

2018

Two of these days have passed over two years where mothers are celebrated, since I last saw you. And I reminisce the card that said “home is where mom is” with birds’ nests on it. 

I try to carry around some part of you with me wherever I go in hopes to make it more home. It is never enough. Truth is I have been running in circles looking for home Maa, but nothing is quite the same unless I can collapse into your warmth. It plays over and over in my head when I told you that I finally understood my world wasn’t so fragile that it could shatter so easily; I was crying into your lap before, but now I could look you in the eye and say it with the sublime knowledge that indeed my world wasn’t that fragile because I saw it, sitting with you in the backseat. 

You looked so beautiful.

(With time I realise I am so much like you; much more than I ever thought I would be; more than I thought was possible.)

I was always terrified, every time I held your hand and saw a wrinkle, telling my self I never want to see you grow old. (Life grants wishes in really strange ways). My world wasn’t fragile that day because there was you in it. And I’m sorry I didn’t realise this sooner when it would have mattered. The word hollow doesn’t even measure the depth of the void. Not a day goes by wishing I’d spent more time. Saying that I miss you sounds too weak. But until I can find the words that will do justice I’ll settle for “I miss you” because that’s really all I have. 
I’m sorry I wasn’t a better daughter. (I choke on these words often).
I should have brought you more flowers, Maa.
And I know that would have been enough.