Remembering is hard to do.

Dear Emma

This letter won’t be about how very much I love you. Although, I do. You’re how I survived today, one year ago.

Normally I start your letters knowing what I want to say.

I have a rough idea of how it will end.

This letter I’m writing because I need to.

Writing is cathartic to me.

The ache and trauma I feel at the loss of my mother is monumental, and so I didn’t think that the anniversary of her passing would feel so catastrophic. I miss her every day. But the wobble of the last week has me shook.

Maybe writing will make me look deeply at that last week and confront what keeps me up at night. Maybe I will better be able to acknowledge what hurt and what helped.

So, I’m sorry if this letter is a little darker than what I normally send you.

I have no clue what I’m about to reduce to writing. But I know that losing my mother has become a part of who I am. Hopefully you having a record of this experience will go some ways to you truly knowing me.

I flew back to Cape Town with you on the 13th of February 2018.

You were 9 days shy of 4 months old.

We flew out of Dubai and landed in CT late that night.

We spent our stay at Aunty Nicci.

I can’t explain what that homecoming was like. It was the most contradictory trip of my life. I was a new mother who had delivered her baby in an expat land.

Taking you to the place of my birth, to my home, was always going to be a big deal. I wanted you to smell it and feel the love that lives there for us in so many hearts.

On one hand, I was so proud to present you to our people. Our family and friends who were so excited to meet you. On the other, I was devastated that we should be returning under such circumstances.

As the plane descended into CT, I whispered over you, asleep in my arms: “welcome home, Emma”. And, I wept.

I was scared of what I was about to face. Now I know that I was flying straight into my worst nightmare.

The next morning was Valentine’s Day. Your Aunty Michelle’s birthday. You met her, for the first time, beside my mother’s bed in hospital. I didn’t know then that I had 5 days left with my mommy. Although, to see her was to know.

The cancer that killed my mother was our second rodeo.

The first time around, post operatively she suffered from some sort of post op dementia. It saw here hovering in a scary world, for just under a week, where she saw and heard things that weren’t there. Apparently, this is fairly common in patients over the age of sixty who have been under anesthesia for a long time.

It was horrifying. Firstly, because it’s horrible to see your rock weak after major surgery. Secondly, because it feels unnatural and terrifying to see your mother truly scared.

The feeling when you’re little, and your safe place looks wobbly is the same when you’re a grown up. The flight instinct flares hard. I remember feeling that way when we arrived home one day to signs of a house break-in. As we approached the house, my mom stopped in her tracks and held us back. She was so scared. No doubt she tried to keep us calm, but I could sense her fear. Michelle and I begged her, we wanted all 3 of us to get back into the car. “Go mommy. Go! Go! Go!” Essentially, we were asking our mother to take us to a place where she didn’t have that shake in her voice. Where there wasn’t tension in her back. Where the risk of hurt didn’t exist. That’s how it felt to see her confused in hospital. To hear her saying the crazy things she said. You want to run away. Don’t look. Shout at her to stop it! To tell her she was scaring us. But you can’t. You can’t run. You stand beside her and listen. Hold her hand and swallow back tears. Explain things gently to try to keep her from being scared by the terrifying experience she’s living, in her own waking nightmare. You stand there thinking: “where the hell is my mother? And, how do I get her back from there?”

This time around, it happened again. Her worst nightmare, that she revisited that in between land was realized. It didn’t last a week this time. Her days were sometimes good, but she would hover in and out of this confusion for the last few months.

When we saw her that first day, she was confused. She was paranoid that other patients were criminal. She didn’t recognize you. That was so very heartbreaking. You were her pride and joy. Cancer was the criminal. Robbing my mother, even though it was just on that day, of delighting in the knowledge that you were her grandchild. That she was a grandmother at all.

The next day was soothing, to see her eyes light up when I walked in with you. Watery-eyed myself, watching her snuggle you and whispering to you tucked in her arms, in her bed.

The last 5 days were everything and they were nothing.

How grateful I am that we got that week. After battling embassies and home affairs for the right to fly with you. I can’t tell you how fortunate I feel that I got home to see her at all. But, 5 days? 5 days to hold her. To talk to her. To hear her voice. To stare at her hands, consciously willing myself to commit every line on them to my memory. To see her discomfort and pain and exhaustion and to experience the horrific depths of true love. Raw, unselfish love that makes you want to scream it hurts so fucking badly.

Love that makes you acknowledge that your mother needs to die to be okay.

There is nothing that has broken me or forced me to be as grown up as losing my mother. And 5 days was enough because I’m trying with every fiber of my being to be satisfied with the time I got with my mom. But it is nothing compared to the lifetime I will spend longing for her.

My mother died early on Monday, 19 Feb. For lack of a better way to describe it, Saturday with her was beautiful. Traumatizing. But beautiful. I found her to be at her most lucid. The peace she had and exuded was terrifying and comforting at the same time. Mostly everyone she knew visited her. It was the day that she accepted that she was dying. Your heart shatters when you see that acceptance. There’s gratitude that she has peace, and boy did she have peace. And there’s the obvious and deep, deep sadness.

For the last week, this day in particular has played in my memory a lot. Perhaps the singular gift that my mother’s illness gave her was the opportunity to tell people she loved the things she wanted them to hear. My mother kissed her sibling’s goodbye. Seeing that gave me such perspective beside her bed. Suddenly, at the 11th hour, I appreciated that this woman was not just my mom. She had private memories with each person in that room. She had lived a whole life before she became our mother. I suddenly understood that we were all losing someone. A sister, an aunt, a friend, a mother, a wife, the mother of your children. She belonged to so many.

My mother spoke meaningfully to my father on the day. Their relationship had improved dramatically in the last 5 years or so of her life. There were many years when she avoided his company at all. He had married his mistress (whom she now lovingly and selflessly welcomed at her bedside too) and mostly my mother had raised his daughters on her own. No matter all that, I know that my mother always, in some capacity loved him. As the product of that love, to hear my mother talk with him at her death bed was such a heartbreaking honor. She said to him, looking defeated, although I know just how victorious her life: “Pieter, I begged God to let me stay with our girls.” Here was a woman who had married a man and bore him children. She had dutifully and lovingly given all she could to us and at the end her only regret was that she had no more time left to give. My mother and father kissed and exchanged I love you's. I guess it’s their example that will always make me fail to understand how any two people can share children and not forever preserve some love and respect for one another.

My mother used the energy she had on that Saturday to say individual goodbyes and to share her love with every person there. That was one of the most heartbreakingly beautiful days of my whole life right there. Hardest. But in my top two alongside your birth.

We should have known how close the end was on the Sunday.

Mostly she drifted in and out of a deep sleep. I think I did know. That evening, with the peace my dear mom had found and deserved, we circled her bed and prayed, led by my father. Her ex-husband, praying for her peace and speaking over all of us of the grace of God. The father of her two greatest gifts, blessing the communion that would be the last thing she ever ate.

The call came between 6.30 and 7am on Monday morning. No details. Just that we should come. I raced Emma. When you suddenly are faced with the last of absolutely everything, it’s a race against time.

I left you with Aunty Nicci, for the first time in your life unable to put you first. I drove as fast as I could, until peak hour traffic had me driving on pavements and over traffic islands. I drove so aggressively, that I was stopped by the traffic police. I opened my window, screaming and crying so hysterically that I don’t know what I told him. I only know that he was sent by God Himself. He put his siren on and parted the traffic for me, escorting me in a two-car convoy until we reached the hospital and he turned off with a hoot.

I ran through the hospital and then I knew for sure what I knew for the whole drive. Her door, which was always open, was closed. She was still warm. I touched her and kissed her. I touched her hands and her face a hundred times. It was truly the last. I was greedy for her. I rested my head on her chest and heard only the throbbing of my own pulse in my ears. I acknowledged how absolutely fucked up of an experience it was that hers was the first chest I had ever laid on and that laying across it now, so still was disgusting and infuriating and made me so so sad and still, so very very broken and feeling utterly motherless. I felt so sad just for me. I wanted my mommy back. And then I waited for the reckoning that was to come.

Feeling the great pressure of the echo of loss that would sound through our family. Feeling as though I would surely be unable to confront anyone else’s loss. Dreading the sounds of mourning that would fill the room by everyone who loved her...

And then I felt all of the anger and sadness turn into despair for the only person whose loss would look as much like mine. Aunty Michelle. My heart broke again for the other greatest woman in my life. And so, I drank down great gulps of sobering air. I hyped myself up for her arrival. I prayed to God and my mommy that I had arms strong enough and a heart brave enough to see my mother’s first born into this room and tell her that our mommy was gone. If there is any pain greater than that which you suffer, it’s watching the person closest to you being delivered the same blow. It’s like watching your hurt in duplicate. Their reactions are yours made visible.

This duplicated mourning was a constant reminder of the loss that was suffered. Our mother died today a year ago. My cousins lost their Aunt. My Aunts and Uncle lost their sister. Their best friend. Every tear they shed was my tear too, just as mine was theirs.

I didn’t have the presence of mind to speak my gratitude at the time, but looking back I am so very grateful to the cop that day.

I am thankful to the Lennox family. They have treated me as their own for years and Aunty Terry looked after you so lovingly so that I could spend time with my mom on the Saturday. She took you from Aunty Nicci without blinking on the Monday morning and kept you cool and calm when we were in church a few days later.

I’m grateful to Aunty Simone for dropping work and all of her other responsibilities to be with me. After sending everyone home, I insisted on waiting with my mother until she was moved by the funeral home. Aunty Mon never left our side. It’s a long and uncomfortable wait and she is a fine example of a friend who will celebrate with you, but who is also a rock through the hard times.

You will be raised feeling immense love from Aunty Joan and Uncle William. On my side of the family, they will be the closest thing to grandparents you will have. Just like they were always like extra parents to me, even when I had the world’s greatest mother. Not only are they family, but they were my mother’s best friends. 42 years of friendship. They raised their children together and they, aside from Michelle and I were those closest to her. I know that my mother went to rest easier knowing that we would remain under the loving care of these two. I also know that she trusts Michelle and I to love and respect and care for them as the parents we accept them to be.

I guess, just to clarify, I want to say that I’m not writing this letter to find an opportunity to say thank yous. I just know that this story is impossible to recall without acknowledging their part in it.

Did writing this help? I don’t know. Let’s see if I sleep tonight.

But, I am glad you know what that was like for me. I don’t know when you will lose me, but the natural order of the world assumes and hopes that one day I will go and my children will remain. I pray very hard that we are wise enough to always share how we feel about one another. I hope that I don't forget how important it is to be greedy and urgent in your love and affection for those you hold dearest. Because the end of everything is always too soon. I hope you know every day that you are loved. I hope you understand who I am besides being your mother. I hope that we only need to say goodbye when you are very grown up and I am very very old.

I said that this wasn’t about how much I love you. Perhaps it is. All of my happy and all of my sad keeps teaching me how precious life is and how blessed I am to have you in mine.

All of my love. Forever. In this life and after.

Mommy Xx