A dieu

I gave mum a hug, and I could not hold back my tears. Mum was right in front of me, I could feel her body, feel her warmth, hear her breathing and her voice. Mum was right here with me, but to my great shock reading her mail a few moments earlier, my friend's mum is no longer with her.

I wiped the tears, but more seemed to follow. My mum comforted me, told me that life is only so much... there is life, and there is death. We all must leave this world one day. She herself must have been impacted by seeing me cry. Was I crying for my friend, for the loss of a mother I have had the privilege to hear so much about, but have never met... or was I selfishly crying for myself, crying out of fear, out of the realisation that one day I too will lose my mother? I have this intense, intense feeling bottled inside, and I am not sure how to release it...

I do not know, cannot possibly imagine how my friend, so far away is feeling right now. Over our last few email exchanges, she expressed her great fear and pain about slowly losing her mum, the rock and the core of her life. And now she has lost that, and worse still, she was not there when her mum left this world. What sense of loss, what sense of guilt, pain, hurt and deep, deep sorrow my friend must feel!

How she must ache so terribly inside... how I wish I knew what I could write to her to comfort and console her or at least take away part of her pain and sorrow...

I accompanied mum for a jog at the sports field close to our house. I was solemn and quiet, my mind drifting away to my friend and her family. At one point mum said she wanted to rest, so I went off jogging by myself. From a distance I looked back saw mum, saw her slim, frail figure sitting there in the shade. She had her left arm held upward to alleviate the ache and sore she is increasingly feeling. Mum was there, in the distance, and I could see her. But one day, she will no longer be there, she will no longer sit there, and I can no longer see her, even from a distance.

And that pains me greatly...

I cry as I write this... again confused whether I am crying over my own fears, or over my friend's great loss. I have never met her mum, but little by little, from the way my friend has been describing her in the past three years, I have this image of this kind, gentle lady who worked so hard and endured hardship throughout her life to raise so many children. I have this image of the pain and suffering she has been enduring in the past decade or so battling the cruel illness of cancer... Now that battle is lost, and she has left this world.

I will never know this brave soul and caring, loving mother. I do not even know her name. I will never see her face. Nor will I be able to write to her, as I have wanted to do so many times before, to encourage her and to let her know that somewhere out there, someone is thinking of her and wishing her well.

But she has been in my life, in my mind, indirectly through the words and narrations of my friend...

Rest in peace, kind, gentle soul... may you finally rest without pain or suffering, and may you forever protect and watch over the beautiful and fine daughter you have brought into this world...