For Maya, fifteen-years later

Loss moves in mysterious ways. It's a searing shapeshifter - formless fog one day, dazzlingly clear flashback another. A mangled heart. A mess of sorrow and rage and denial. But mostly it just is. Immutable. Enduring. Endless.

My Amma died fifteen years ago today. In the 5,479 days since, I've pined for her, pushed her away, picked myself up and struck a fragile truce with her absence.

The first years were intolerable. My beautiful, bright-eyed, beloved mother, gone at fifty. I'll be forty-two next month. That's how young she was.

Beautiful. Bright-eyed. Beloved. Such platitudes. They belong in obituaries, not a daughter's tribute to a parent. But there's some comfort in their vagueness, because it's devastating to remember those warm, finely-lined hands, the pearl-drops worn everyday, the neat bob, parted to one side, the letters asking if I was eating my vegetables, the eyes that lit up when I entered the room.

In these fifteen years, I've moved forward, but never on. I've made a new life, in a new home, in a new land, with a boy and a man who make my eyes twinkle with the same joy. I struggle to imagine her in a reality so alien to the one we once shared. Yet, she walks with me today and everyday. 

I tell Adil that I'm thinking of my Amma. That she died many years ago. That I miss her. "Did she love you", he asks? "Very dearly', I reply. "But you can still love someone after you die, Amma", he says. "Yes, Adu. You're absolutely right."