A Year Ago

A year ago on August the 8^th, my mother passed on. What was it like? Like nothing you will ever again experience in your life. Being a normal human being with selfish instincts, I instantly felt so alone. Why does my mother have to leave me on this earth all alone? Is nobody aware that I am not ready to go on living without her? Who will I turn to now when I have a problem? Who will comfort and still love me when the whole world is against me? Who now will love me unconditionally? How is this all happening to me??

I was devastated. I felt that everything was crumbling. I felt lost. Everything was pointless. Nothing had meaning anymore. I felt that it was too late for everything. I never had the chance to say goodbye even though it is something nobody ever wants to do. I never got the chance to tell her that I loved her unconditionally and that I truly appreciate her and will always need her, for one last time. Up until that point, I believed that every person should be granted that privilege in life. To be sure that someone knows, just before they die, that they mean something to someone else in this world. That they will never be forgotten. But that is not how it’s meant to be for everyone.

During her final months, she talked of how afraid she was of dying. My response to her each time was how that will never happen, exactly how I felt and saw things then. She has been in my life all along and I was certain that she will always be there. It was always a fact to me that my mother would pass on one day, but that she was also invincible.

My mother was diagnosed with ALS – Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis in 2007. ALS is a progressive, fatal neuro-degenerative disease caused by the degeneration of motor neurons, the nerve cells in the central nervous system that control voluntary muscle movement. She first lost the use of her left arm and at the time of her death, her right arm was very weak and both her legs were displaying signs of degeneration. As the disease did not affect her cognitive abilities, she was fully aware of her progressive loss of function and became anxious and depressed. In the weeks before she passed on, my mother was having difficulty breathing as the muscles of her respiratory system was growing weak. My mother succumbed to ALS only two years after she was diagnosed. She died due to respiratory failure.

Bathing and dressing my mother for the very last time, I broke down several times. I wasn’t sure if the Kebaya Nyonya was the outfit she would have wanted to be last seen in. I have always seek her out for anything important in my life. This was important, it was my mother’s funeral and she cannot advise me on it. My brother and I knew that we were on our own then. Seeing my mother in her coffin is a sight that I don’t wish to remember nor forget. We are never ready to lose a loved one to death.

In the aftermath of losing our mother, my brother and I had her estate and personal belongings to sort out. We decided that I should sort her personal belongings. Everything was so still in her bedroom. Someone had made up her bed after the funeral. Everything else was exactly where she had left them. Up until then, I had only gone through her things with intent to find something that I liked and then proceeded to coax her into giving it to me. Clothes, accessories, make-up and perfume. I chuckled then knowing that that was also what she did when she went into my room.

Her clothes still carried her scent. Her hairbrush still had strands of her hair tangled in it. Her watch showed that time is moving on while I stood still there in her bedroom. I wanted to stay there as long as I could and cry my eyes out. No matter how much I cried, the pain and sadness still remained. Eventually, we managed to pack and donate everything to the needy.

Whilst my beloved mother was still alive, she made sure to tell us how much we, my brother and me, meant to her. Everytime we did something good and other times when we did something bad. Sometimes, she would just call us over and gave a hug and a kiss and tell us that she loved us because that was the exact emotion she had at the time. I miss that. I realize now that she was the only person in my life whom practiced that. In consolation, we treated our mother the same. I can still smell her perfume and feel her rouged cheek, where I always kissed her.

I cannot go to her when something excites or saddens me now. But she is the very first person I think of. Realizing that she isn’t around anymore and that I can’t share the moment with her, never fails to stab me sharply each time. To me, my mother is irreplaceable. However, she is also unforgettable. What she has left behind in my brother and me will live on. Should I be graced with children of my own one day, I will tell them who their grandmother was and let them know that they would have meant something to her.