Loss

I lost my mother when I was young and thought that meant nothing. Not nothing per se but I thought, “how much more horrible can my life get that my mother dying would affect it”. I did not cry for a long time, I behaved like I did not understand what was happening because I believed it would make the adults’ lives easier.

My mother’s name was Elizabeth Kolade, December 12th was her birthday, she had a happy smile and she loved her children. These are things I am coming to find out at 23, things I am trying to understand in a way that does not fill me with sadness. My mother’s story and legacy were carried on by people that disliked her because she refused to bend and she protected her children. This is relevant now at 25 when I continue this search and realise her legacy has not been maintained in any way.

You know when you are an adult…and you want to bring out a dish and another one falls from the back somehow. You used to get screamed at for this as a kid, this was an event that caused your heart to race, your palms to get sweaty and for the back of your jaw to ache from clenching so hard in wait for the inevitable scream. This used to be a big event for your body but now you are an adult. This dish that fell, you were given by a very important person, you have not used in a while, you barely even remember it is there. Its broken pieces lay out on your floor and you look at it and the only thought you have is, “ugh, I need to clean that up”. When you talk to anyone, even the person that gifted you the dish, as the day goes on, you do not even talk to them about the dish, it’s pieces are in the trash now.

This is exactly how it was searching for pieces that made up the mosaic of my mother. She was the dish that was forgotten and was now in the trash. Each individual person I spoke to, despite them not being in contact with each other had an air about them. There was surprise to hear from me, yes, they wanted to know more about me of course. However, they seemed not to have held the pieces of my mother at all, they seemed not to have prepared for the eventuality that one of her three children would come to see about her. Would come to see if they were guardians of pieces of her that she prepared for her children. That after all these years being entrusted to the wrong person, being harmed, there would be pieces to ground us (I and my sisters) in love and care. They barely had anything to say, they barely had anything to give. It was like her and the pieces of her she left in this world were insignificant.

The loss is creeping at this age where I am unprepared for it, I thought I had dealt with this long ago but I had not. I am now at an age that I realise younger me was right, not in the way I thought, It did not mean anything, not then. Yes, you need your mother when you are growing up, when you are younger but the point where it becomes crucial is when you need your mum to ground you in the unmooring of adulthood. I see people have their worst days on the internet, have times where the world expects them to buck up because they had to and the world is a cycle of cynical disregard. In those moments, they return to their mothers, they speak to the person that signed up to care for them, they fall into her arms and know that no matter what, they are loved. These mothers would know when things are wrong with their children and would know if their children have killed themselves. Some mothers pour their prayers into their children, others take up arms in the name of their children and some mothers are solid, they are tangible and warm blankets.

Now the loss tangles with my loneliness and I mourn a woman that was disregarded and I never knew. Some days, it holds me in its hands and feels like mist or fog, I can see through it but not really. I believe I am okay and functioning but I am not, I notice every gesture mums make towards their children. I notice fathers that call their children and will notice their children are dying and rush to find an answer to their child’s every question. In those days, my father’s words and lack of communication are sharper. The fog lifts long enough for that image to be clearer, for me to read better, for the unkindness to settle like tiny pebbles in the lake of my person.

Somedays, I do not know what I am missing. I feel, distantly, like I have forgotten something.