To the world, three years is a long time to mourn. But grief does not have a timeline; it comes and goes as it pleases. (Image source: GettyImages/ Representational Image)
Every year I dread the first two weeks of May. Mother’s Day is a difficult time for many of us who are grieving the loss of our mothers. Opening email and message inboxes becomes triggering as they scream gift ideas and offers for ‘your mom’— the mom that I no longer have. They add on the emotional torment as the unresolved grief burrows itself deeper.
In 2021, my mother passed away after an open-heart surgery. It was a surgery that my stubborn-hearted mother didn’t want in the first place. In spite of the doctors’ insistence, she wanted to live out the limited number of days she had tending to our kitchen garden in the foothills of Manipur. It took me weeks and some emotional blackmail to convince her.
The surgery was successful and we were elated. But within hours, she developed various complications. What followed was a nightmare — she was on ventilator support for nearly a month as her organs started to fail. Due to COVID-19 protocols, my siblings and I took turns to see her during visiting hours.
Lying on a white bed with various tubes coming out of her body, my mother would hold onto our hands urging us to stay longer. Amid the sounds of beeping machines, we would narrate happy updates of our daily lives and urge her to not give up. She would nod and hold onto our hands a little tighter. She desperately wanted to live, and survived the first two heart attacks.
But in the third week, as her kidneys gave up, she also began to give up. She would shut her eyes tightly, not reacting to anything we said. It was her way of telling us that she didn’t want to see us anymore. She was in pain physically and emotionally. She wanted us to let her go. But we weren’t ready and kept requesting the doctors to try whatever they could. A few days later, we lost her to another heart attack.
It has been little more than three years since I last saw my mother, to never see her again. My life changed forever in that moment. I wasn’t ready for goodbye then, and perhaps in my subconscious mind, even now. I often see her in my dreams, having our usual banter and arguing about mundane things. When the sleep breaks, it takes a moment for reality to seep in. And these words by Meghan O’Rourke echo in my head, “Am I really she who has woken up again without a mother? Yes, I am”.
To the world, three years is a long time to mourn. But grief does not have a timeline; it comes and goes as it pleases. Sometimes it can be a fleeting moment, and sometimes it can engulf you like a heavy coat, just lingering on.
With time, I have accepted my new reality — that I am motherless now and the deep void that I feel in my being will be a part of me throughout this lifetime. But the guilt of the what-if-I-hadn’t-convinced-her scenario still gnaws at me. While I don’t cry raw anymore at the mere mention of her like I did in the first year, I don’t actively seek out her memories. I repress my feelings, afraid of the floodgates it might open. It is still not easy.
In my limited understanding, I have learned that the loss of a mother is very different from other types of grief as the connection has been lifelong, in fact some call it pre-life referring to the umbilical cord. Her death is like being cut off from the anchor that tied us to this world. It is but natural to feel completely lost and to take our own time to process it.
I hope society spares us, the motherless daughters and sons, some thought as they celebrate today. It can begin with an acknowledgement of our existence, and perhaps a simple opt-out feature from their Mother’s Day tributes and campaigns.
The writer is a political activist and founder of Femme First Foundation
