Word To My Mother
Word To My Mother is a personal project I have been working on for the past 8-9 years where I process the loss of my mom and my life without her since then in the form of letters addresses to her personally. She passed away in 2004 when I was 14, just when we had started building our mother-daughter relationship.
We both shared a love for movies and books. Apart from passing on her mad shopping habit, she also got me into movies and reading, which sparked my love for the creative arts. However, as parents of South East Asian descent, she and my dad would not actively encourage my pursuit of a career in the arts. Who could blame them, though? On one hand, it is the culture. On the other, a career in the arts was only reserved for the elite in early 90’s/00’s. Little did we know that technology would turn out the way it did.
This project has been a tough grieving process that made me realize that grief never ends, it just takes different forms. For years after her death, I spent idolizing my mother through the eyes of only a young child, as that is the way I will always remember her. Now, looking at my drafts with the eyes of an adult – older and slightly wiser than when I started writing this – I have had to process and make my peace with the fact that she was not a perfect human being. This has been a tough realization, but it is important that I remember that this does not undo or trivialize the mom-shaped hole she left in my life.
What follows is an excerpt of a chapter from Word To My Mother, that I have chosen to share with The Every Day Magazine. With this project, I hope that others who lost a loved one can find some solace in the fact that, while we all go through similar stages of grief, we all deal with it differently – and that that is okay.
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After you passed on that night, I have not stopped wondering where you went. Is there a heaven and hell? Or is it just a simple afterlife? Is there even anything or do I look like silly now, as if I am talking to an imaginary friend? Because let’s face it: I do not know where you are right now nor can I be sure that you even are around. But no matter what anyone says: that night, I know you were with us. I just knew it.
There was snow. I cannot remember if it was snowing at that exact moment, but it had snowed before. It had been a while since we last had that much snow. I usually love the snow, I still do, but it took a while for me to love it again after that night. Watching you go was not pleasant for us, but at least we got to say our goodbyes. Do you remember those? Could you hear us? And what about you, did you get to say your goodbyes? Were you even aware of what was going on? The doctor had you on a heavy dose of morphine to numb the pain for a while, so I doubt you even realized what was going on, but who am I to know? It was all very surreal for me. I cried my eyes until my skin dried out but, at the same time, I had never felt as apathic as I did in that moment. Of course, I cared that I had just lost you, but I cared so much that I could not feel anything anymore. Maybe I felt so much that I had shut down like some sort of defence mechanism. I still cannot tell, even seventeen years later. Either way, I do remember going to bed expecting to wake up from this strange dream that predicted the future that had not come yet. You would still be there once I had regained full consciousness. Or even better, this whole ordeal with you being sick was just a horrible nightmare. But unfortunately that was not the case.
What you did, though, was make your presence known that night. You were not one for entering or leaving unnoticed, even when you tried to sneak out for your early shift while we were asleep. I always heard you in the bathroom and I always heard you lock the door. That part broke my heart, because I always intended to say goodbye to you for the day, even though you would come back. To this day, I still hate it when people leave without saying goodbye. When I lived in Belfast, both of my siblings came over to celebrate New Year’s Eve together. They got the early flight back, but I had fallen asleep – I promise you, that was not because of the alcohol we did not drink – that I could barely get up when they came in to say goodbye. I woke up with a lingering sadness – that was not amplified by the hangover I did not have - the same way I always did when I heard you leave for work. The night you passed, sleep eluded all of us. It had been a long day. Eventually, we did manage to get a few hours in. This was not by choice, though, but by physical exhaustion. Our bodies had to blackmail us into sleep and even then, we barely slept. During the few ‘waking’ hours, I heard the rattling of the iron cloth hangers as if you were picking clothes in your wardrobe. I could swear you were trying to take them with you. There usually was no wind in the walk-in closet and the cats were downstairs. Even then, they do not move the hangers or the clothes for it to make the noise it made that night. I heard you. You were busted, lady.
The days followed were all a blur that I can remember for the most part. By now, they have melted together like a dream sequence from a David Lynch movie. You know there are parts missing but even the few parts you do recall, make enough sense for you to relive the emotions that came with them. It was as if I was stuck in the Black Lodge trying to find out where you had gone, but I could not get there because I had to pass on before I could get an Uber to that destination. You did not even show up to speak backwards to me, you just tried to take your clothes with you instead.
The next day I woke up, I felt fine. It was like every morning, as if you were still there and nothing had changed. But somewhere, it also felt wrong, as if I were not allowed to feel this way. I had never lost someone so close to me before, so I had nobody, no guideline, no book to tell me whether what was wrong or right. All I did, was move on with my life. I had a shower, made breakfast, and while I could not feel my own emotions, I went through them with others to comfort them in their loss, like a borderline psychopath. When you lose someone, it feels as if time stops. It feels like time should stop to give you a break from life to grieve. You cannot move on until you have run out of tears, until you decided that it is time to move on. But time does not stop for that. Time goes on, so life goes on. The sun continues to rise and set, regardless of how you grieve, and that became a hard reality check when my grief hit me at a later stage. For most of the early stages of my grief, every day that passed, felt like I was leaving you and my memory of you behind. As if you were to be forgotten against my will. In a more tangible sense, it was as if we went to the cinema, but I was the only one who had to leave for closing time. It was basically Murder House in the first season of American Horror Story, but without the murder. I refused to grieve because it felt like a waste of time. Time should be spent doing the things you like, not the things that are upsetting. I wanted to press the pause button, call a time-out, so I could watch Gilmore Girls on repeat, read all the books on grief, and properly deal with your loss. I wanted to make a schedule in a spreadsheet and set a deadline as if it was a school assignment. Go through every stage before I could hit ‘play’ on my magic watch again. I wanted to control my life and my grief, but that is also not how it works. Like the rest of the family, I was not ready to bury you when the time came. But when the time had come, we had no choice.
At moments like these, you tend to go through the motions. At least, I felt like I did. There were times where I genuinely felt the sadness and cried, but there were also times where I could shift my focus on something else. I did not think that this was okay or even possible, so I just went along with it. At those moments, I just went through the motions. It felt like the things I had to do or to put on display, so I did. It is just strange to think that a week ago, you were still with us. A few months ago, you were still kicking cancer’s ass as if your life were directed by Quentin Tarantino. You were Uma Thurman and Bill was your cancer, while paying homage to Bruce Lee. Ha, you would have appreciated that.
The time had come. This whole process became another shock to the system, as we were unexpectedly brought into the funeral home to say our final goodbyes. It was not meant to happen for another day, but then dad received the call from the funeral parlour. We were rushed into the car. None of us got time to prepare for this. You never really can. We went in to say our goodbyes. Your sisters were there, standing around your wrapped body in the morgue. As per Islamic tradition, they cleansed and cleaned your body in preparation for your funeral. I did not know this was a tradition until then. If I had known beforehand, I would have offered to help. Even though I was only fourteen, I wanted to feel useful and make my own contribution to your passing as if that could make a difference. It may have added value to my grief, but it was also still a part of me not wanting to let you go. On the other hand, I thought it would have been able to give me that final movie moment of saying goodbye to your physical body – another moment I tried to control, by making myself believe I was saying goodbye to you on my terms. It also would have been nice to pay you this one honour, to be able to do that for you. In the end, we were not involved as we were too close to you as your children, I think.
The smell of the morgue still haunts me. Its aesthetic was grey and blue, as if it were an internal nighttime scene directed by David Fincher. I always thought it would be more Whedonesque. Going into the morgue, I imagined that I would be more like Buffy: brave and fearless. But even when she had to say her final goodbyes to her mom, she broke down. She broke, the same way I did. The same way we all did. The same way anyone would if they saw their loved one lying on a cold, steel table in a place whose literal business is death. You were lying there, wrapped up, leaving only your face uncovered. You looked like you were asleep.
There have been many times where I would creep up on you as a child while you were asleep. I would just look at you and your features: your high cheekbones, your closed eyes, your short Asian lashes, your fair eyebrows, and your flawless skin. I would smell your perfume, listen to you breathe, watch your chest rise and fall with every breath, and touch the soft skin on your face. I would watch your eyes shift around in their sockets and, out of curiosity, lift your eyelids to see what they were doing. As they say: curiosity killed the cat and the rapid eye movements from the REM cycle heavily spooked my 8-year-old self. I immediately regretted that decision, but it did not stop me from doing it again. It was like a train wreck: I kept looking, sometimes until it would wake you. Putting this on paper makes me sound like a psychopath in the making.
When you slept during the day, I would wake you to spend time with you. We all did. You were a hard-working woman, working 2 jobs, and you were always tired when you were home. We would miss you because there were times where we would barely see you. And if you were around, you were asleep. So, we would wake you to spend time with us. Or to even be awake and in your presence. We just wanted to have you around. Little did we know why you were always tired. This time, in the morgue, I had no curiosity at all. There was no point in trying to wake you. You were not going to wake up. Not for me, not for dad, not for my sister, or your favourite little boy. No Jackie Chan or Wesley Snipes movie was going to keep you up, even if they were in the same room. This sleep was going to last forever, whether we liked it or not.
As I leaned in to say goodbye, I struggled to hold back my tears. I wanted to be brave for you, but I struggled. My body would not let me be brave. This was another one of those reality checks that caught up with me, as it made me realize that this goodbye was going to be forever, and no amount of courage was going to change that. You were as real as you lay there, and I was never going to see, hear, smell, or touch you ever again. I kissed you and touched your face with my fingers. Your skin was not as soft as it had been before. It was cold and almost hard. The colour of your skin had faded and your lips were completely pale. I could not smell your perfume anymore. Even if you were wearing your signature Issey Miyake, it would have been overpowered by the strong, almost minty smell of the morgue. I could not hear or see your breath anymore. I could lift your eyelids and shake you all I wanted: you were not going to wake up this time. Not later during the day, not after you had rested, not for dinner time. This was goodbye. An unexpected yet expected, unprepared goodbye.
We cried. I cried. “Don’t cry,” one of your sisters said. She did not mean it as mean as harsh as it sounds on paper nor as it may have sounded in real life. We all have a habit of sounding a lot harsher than we mean our words to be, especially in our family. Being Malay means we are loud, being Asian means we can be direct at times that can simultaneously come across as rude. But that is not the way she meant it. She was trying to provide some form of comfort, but also feared of disturbing your spirit. The first thing my 14-year-old brain thought was: “excuse me, what the fuck?” Part of me now thinks that maybe I should have said it. That probably would have woken you up and slapped the living hell out of me for cursing, let alone talking back to your sisters. But I was crazy about my aunties and the shock of it stopped me in my tracks. It even stopped all of us because that is not what we expected to hear. “You will disturb her spirit passing on if you cry near the body. She needs to let go or else she will not pass on.” Dad, who always respected my mother’s and her family’s religion, pulled us all together and tearfully said “try not to cry.” He did not mean it the same way it came out either. There was nothing he would not have done for you. I cried, nonetheless, hoping it would disturb your passing. I did not want you to leave or to pass on. This might make you come back. Who says passing on is better anyway? I wanted you to stay with us. I did not care how selfish that was, we needed you. I did not have the strength to walk away because I was not ready. I probably still would have been there if the choice were on me. Eventually, we had to leave because you had to go.
Written by Indah Suria
Indah is an Ireland based contributor from The Netherlands. After her BA (hons) in film and her masters in creative media practice, she runs Suria Creative - her own freelance writing and design business. When she is not working, she makes time to practice photography, yoga, pole or any other form of dancing. On her lazy days, she enjoys reading or binging series. While at home she is known to be the queen of snacks, on IG she’s just plain old @indahgramm and has a pole account at @impolefection. You can catch her freelance work at www.suriacreative.com.