A letter to my late mum. Dated 30th June 2025.

Dear Mum,

I turned 30 today. I wonder what kind of a relationship you would have had with me as an adult. Would you have called to wish me happy birthday? Or bought me a gift? Or perhaps you would have baked me a cake. I wonder what your love language was. How you would have expressed your love and care on such days. Maybe you would definitely have baked a cake. You did that when I was a child. I remember the birthdays, but more so the photos remind me of them. My memory fails me when it comes to my childhood. It is quite foggy and the details not quite clear.

My recent past of a few years have been drastic. My worldview has turned upside down, inside out. And so has my life and relationships. I lost most of my friends and ran into headwinds with family. Mum, I have been quite isolated recently. It has been a tough thing. Necessary but so damn difficult. I have been rebuilding, brick by brick. With much uncertainty and mostly alone. Some days I am very lonely. I wish I could talk to someone who would hold me with love and tell me I will be okay. Someone like you. But I have not been so lucky. So I learnt to find comfort in myself. In my writing I found an escape and also a restoration. A discovery of my own heart’s unlimited love that has pulled me out of the darkness and grief that haunts me so often. It has not been easy.

In the recent years getting to 30, I have been through a lot. Yet I have no regrets. Through the greatest pain, I have learnt who I am. Remembered who I am. And I am still remembering. It is through a lot of pain that I have shed the scales of who I thought I was. Who I had come to believe I was. Through much pain, I have let go of chains, burdens I was carrying around. It has been painful yet also a big relief. Now I am rediscovering life, step by step. Building relationships, step by step. It is like being born again. Like knowing what I don’t want but still discovering what I really want.

I wonder how it was for you at 30. You were just marrying dad at that time. Did you have it all figured out? Or you did what was expected of you by society at that time. Or both. Life, I have come to learn carries great contradictions and compromises. I wonder what your ambitions were at 30. What your struggles were.

If you were alive, would you understand if I made the decisions I have made? Would you be willing to listen? But then perhaps the struggles would have been different. My struggles today are so connected with your death. It has greatly defined my life. Because of it, I have 2 mums. Because of it, I have all these complex dynamics of a blended family. Yet I have tried to ignore it my whole life. Ironic.

Would we have been one big, happy family if you lived? I would have had a younger sister, that I know.  What kind of family would we have been? Maybe it would have been similar to the families of your sisters and brothers. Maybe not. What kind of husband would dad have been to you? I wonder what it would have been like. I wonder.