Mumories and shadows

She stopped talking. I could see her eyes were watering. The words could not come out...

She and mum have known each other over a decade. The auntie watched me grow up. I was in primary school when our family got to know her.

Every time mum visited the Netherlands she would visit the auntie, and often take me with her. Last time mum and I visited together was two years ago. Last mum visited her was last year (2011), just after she went to spend a couple of weeks in Canada.

This time I visited the auntie alone. I went by bike, the bike mum bought last year when she was in the country. It's a ladies bike, and now there's a baby seat on the back. How things have changed within a year or so.

We sat down in the living room, and caught up on lives. But we all (her husband was there too...) knew and felt there is an absence. We talked about mum, about her life, how wonderful she was, how well lived her life was, how exciting her life was having been so many places...

It was just after lunch, just before I was about to leave. "Thank you," I said, "You've always been so kind and caring toward mum and me..." Even till the end, the auntie wrote to mum and tried to encourage her. Following tradition, the auntie even sent some money after mum passed away.

"She was so..." the auntie began, but my words and the emotions made her speechless. She just sat there, looking down, looking sad by memories of mum.

I gave her a hug before I left, and told her to take good care of herself.

"It takes time..." she reminded me before I left. "Even now, I still cannot deal with the things..." She lost her daughter around ten years ago. She said she left her daughter's things as they are.

I biked home, in the drizzling rain. The streets look so familiar, so laden with memories, cast with shadows of my dear mother... The familiar restaurants, museums, cafes where mum and I once have been to together. Mum was here, but she is no longer...

Coming back here for the first time since mum passed away is proving more difficult than I imagined...