I realized it only when distance set us apart, how I took you for granted. When you were no longer in this world did I realize what importance I hadn’t given you. You gave me life and I realized what that meant when you lost yours. The one who taught me to walk and to speak, what do I say to you now that you are gone? To the one that went without, to give me more, where do I go to get back even a piece of you? At which temple do I light a candle for your soul, where do I go to bow my head for forgiveness? Would you hear me if I told you how much it hurts? Years have gone by yet the cry and my tears have remained the same? How I long for your embrace, how I long for you to call my name the way only you did. Your absence, I still feel it today, time hasn’t healed anything really, it’s just made me realize that everything else around me could have waited but you were so much more important because there wasn’t enough time left.
After you left, I longed to be a mother, I longed to hold something so close, something to call my own. I’m a mother now, and only when I became one did I realize the power of a matriarch. Only a mother stays awake all night seeking comfort for her child. Only a mother hurts when her child is in pain. It’s when she carries her unborn child that she becomes fearless and brave, that is also when another avatar within her takes birth. The one that will lie and cry for her own, she will do anything to shield them. Today when they are grown my maternal strength remains, I will continue to protect. A mother does the little things and the unimaginable and yet we go about our lives as if it is our struggle alone. No man realizes the depth of our pain and yet it is man himself who is born from us. We are the ones that give birth to the future, what we leave behind is our legacy.
Don’t get me wrong, my father also held love in his heart for me but my mother held the love of the universe. He knew how to love me too but my mother knew how to give her life for me. He showered me with blessings and prayed for me but my mother would have fought the universe for me. Her one tight embrace didn’t have a chance against his one withered hug. If being a mother was that easy, every father could have become one.