Today marks eleven years since you left this world, Maa.
Time has moved, seasons have turned, life has changed in countless ways — and yet, somewhere within me, a part of time has remained paused on the day you went away.
I have often wondered what it truly means to lose a mother. It is not only the loss of a person. It is the quiet disappearance of a certain kind of safety — the one place where explanations were never needed, where my silence was understood, where I could return again and again, no matter my age.
Some memories return to me with a physical clarity. Your fingers moving gently through my hair. The steady comfort of your lap. The way you listened — fully, patiently — even to things that must have seemed small. Those moments were not extraordinary then. They were simply life. Today I recognise them as treasures.
After Papa was gone, you became strength in two directions at once. You carried responsibility and tenderness together so naturally that I grew up without fully seeing the weight you bore. Only later did I realise how much you shielded me from absence. You never allowed me to feel that something essential was missing — even though it was.
And yet, the child in me never stopped missing him.
And the woman in me never stopped needing you.
There are stages of life where the presence of parents feels especially necessary — raising children, facing uncertainty, navigating decisions, and celebrating milestones. In each of these places, I have felt the outline of both of you beside me, invisible but unmistakable.
So much of how I think about people came from you. Your belief in dignity, in kindness without display, in treating others with regard regardless of their place in life — these lessons settled quietly into me over the years. I see them now in how I try to guide my sons, in how I measure my own conduct, in how I return to your voice when unsure.
Grief, I have learned, does not end. It changes texture. It becomes woven into daily living — sometimes faint, sometimes suddenly sharp. There are days it sits quietly in the background. And then there are moments — unexpected — when longing arrives as fresh as ever. A thought, a memory, a need to share something, and the realisation follows: the person who would have understood most is no longer here to hear it.
What remains, though, is a connection of another kind.
I still feel watched over in ways I cannot explain.
I still feel encouraged by a faith you always had in me — a certainty that I would endure, that I would find my way, that I would stand again after falling.
That belief has become something I carry for myself now.
If there is anything I hope reaches you, wherever you are, it is this:
I am still walking forward with the values you placed in me.
I am still trying to live with integrity, with compassion, with quiet strength.
I am still your daughter — shaped by your love, steadied by your example.
Eleven years have passed, Maa.
But nothing that truly belonged to us has passed with them.
You are missed in ways words cannot contain.
You are loved in ways time cannot reduce.
And you are present — always — in me.
A Special Note for my Maa !
To my dearest Maa…
11 years have passed today, yet not a single day has gone by without you living somewhere in my thoughts, my heart, my prayers.
I miss our endless conversations, your quiet wisdom, even our little arguments. I miss your hugs, your kisses, the comfort of lying in your lap while you oiled my hair and told me everything would be alright. I miss the way we spoke about life, about values, about how I should raise my sons.
You always said, “Respect others and respect will find you.”
I carry that with me every day.
When you left, I was told not to run from pain but to learn to live with it.
11 years later, I can say — the pain never leaves, it simply becomes a part of you.
You were Maa and Papa both to me for so many years, and never once did you let me feel the emptiness. Yet even today, at every milestone, every struggle, every moment I wish to share, I miss you both.
I don’t have you to hold me when I cry.
I don’t have you to lift me when I fall.
But I still believe you sit beside God, telling Him, “She will make it through.”
I promise, Maa — I’m trying every day to become someone you would be proud of.
I love you beyond words.
Until I see you again. 🤍
