I was my mother’s third-to-last child, but I was her favourite. The things my siblings would do and earn a sharp remark from her, I was allowed to do. If I cried on a whim, I got what I wanted. One evening, when we came home from school, she was not there. They said she went to the hospital. The next day we came home again to her absence, with my uncle and aunties in black. They said, “God came for her.” I asked them to send me to God to bring her back. My aunty held me in a warm embrace, her tears falling on top of my head.
The house was filled with many people flowing in; some days later the numbers reduced. Even when people were still in the house, I was left with the responsibility of taking care of my younger siblings.
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After my mother’s burial, her younger sister, my aunt, took my siblings and me in. For that, I will forever remain grateful and thankful because she gave us a home when we needed one the most.
In that house, a lot of things went wrong. My aunt was someone who naturally chose her own children over us. I understand that biological parents will always have a special connection with their children, but in my situation, this was someone I had grown up with from a very young age. If anything, I hoped for a motherly bond, a relationship where I could feel accepted and loved like her own child, but I did not experience that.
In an attempt to appreciate her every Mother’s Day since I started working, I sent her gifts and money. Even when I was not available, I would send money to a cousin to get something for her on my behalf.
But over time, the constant feeling of being treated differently made me stop doing certain things. She would rarely call to ask how I was doing or how life was treating me. It was when I called to check on her that she would ask for airtime or other support. It was never about the money, but about the feeling that the relationship only existed when I made the effort.
So many times, she made it clear that certain privileges and opportunities should have gone to her children before us. She told us to our faces, or she would tell her friend who would later come and tell us what our aunty was saying. It made it difficult for me to get closer to her or even open up about what was happening in my life.
Sometimes, I wished I had that close relationship with her. To tell her about my love life, to laugh with her over a joke. To be able to hug her. To have the hug of a mother. I wished I had someone I could call when life became difficult, someone I could share my worries and struggles with as a young man. But that person was never there.
So, I learned to swallow my pain, smile, and keep moving. I became the person who makes life easier for others while silently carrying my own struggles. Sometimes, I wonder how much this has affected me because deep down, I know there are wounds I have never truly dealt with.
For many reasons, I feel jealous when I see people who still have their mothers alive and healthy. Mother’s Day is especially difficult for me. I avoid going to church on that day, and I try to stay away from anything that reminds me of it because it brings back feelings I struggle to explain.
I see my friends who don’t pick up their mother’s call because of one or two things. I tell them to love them while alive. To take pictures with them.
For me, the only memories I have of my mother are from her final days on earth. I was very young, but that image of her on the bed is still imprinted in my head. I close my eyes and I see her, my head on her stomach, her clutching my head like it was life itself.
Now, I find myself asking: how do I overcome this pain? How do I heal from something that happened decades ago but still feels so painful whenever I think about it?
I lost my mother in the early 2000s, but there are moments when I still feel like that little boy who lost the most important person in his life.
People see a young man who smiles, helps others, and makes life easier for those around him. But behind that smile is someone who is still trying to understand and heal from a loss he never truly recovered from.
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I want to move past the stage where I remember my mother in the little things. I want to overcome the grief. How did you learn to live with a loss that changed you forever?
—David
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