Grieving a mother

Few instances would compel me to delay my intended column and write something else—usually something controversial or tragic. This week, unfortunately, it’s the latter. I’m aware more than anyone else that my recent columns have focused squarely on politics.

In the middle of a general election season this is our reality and it must be written about. As much as politics will continuously occupy a large part of our public consciousness, the death of a loved one forces us to confront the smallness of everything else. On Sunday, I woke up to the kind of news we never want but often receive anyway.



Such is the nature of life—inevitable death. I faced this inevitability when I learnt of my aunt’s passing. I refer to my aunt here only to distinguish her from my biological mother.

In fact, both women were more than mothers since they also ­fathered me. While my columns aren’t my personal diary, on some level they are the nation’s diary where collective thoughts, emotions and experiences are channelled through my eyes and feelings. For this reason, I feel it necessary to write about something we don’t typically talk about—grief.

My grandmother, and my aunt’s mother, passed away in 2019. But this feels different—for the obvious reason that my aunt took responsibility for me from birth to pre-pubescence. Now in my mid-thirties, having lost the closest person in my life up to this point, she continues to teach me life lessons even in her death.

Recognising the smallness of everything else when a mother dies is not something I had to confront in my twenties. In some ways, the inevitable passing away of those closest to us is a signal of our own ageing and what will eventually be our inevitable death. In addition to learning to accept the inevitability of death is allowing yourself to grieve the way that you want to.

I use the word “allow” intentionally because oftentimes our lives may feel dictated by supernatural or celestial forces. We reproduce this feeling in phrases such as “what will be, will be”, “things happen for a reason” and “what goes around comes around”. Similarly we might be told, or we read, what are acceptable or typical ways to grieve when grief is something profoundly individual.

No one but you gets to determine how you grieve. What I have already come to learn from my aunt’s passing is that it is important to discover the reason for that grief. When I received that fateful message now etched into my memory, there was brief shock—no tears.

As I fulfilled my duty of passing on the message to family members and friends, their own messages of condolences trickled in. Calls came, too, which I rejected—not because I didn’t appreciate the thoughts, but because I didn’t understand the scale of what I had just come face-to-face with. I knew I had lost someone close to me, but I didn’t know what to feel or how to feel about the loss.

One message stood out: “Tell me [when is the funeral] and I’ll come.” It was at that point the tears came. Another message from the same person followed: “You ain’t grow up and reach how you reach jusso.

” More tears. I recognised in that moment that offering condolences for the loss of someone only scratches the surface. Death might be a “one and done”, but grief endures long after.

Allowing ourselves to discover our individual ways of grieving loss is as significant as carrying out the formalities associated with the loss itself. In my case, the first wave of grief I experienced was based more on the recognition of what the loss meant. This was someone who selflessly took time out of her life to mould me.

During primary school, after reaching home every day, I would routinely sit next to my aunt as she flipped through my books, looking for assigned homework. On one particular day, she realised pages were missing from the middle of one of my copybooks. I was disciplined with an ­unapologetic backhand for ripping out pages to write stories unrelated to the subject matter of the book (I had run out of pages in my creative writing book, but not out of crazy ideas for more stories).

As much as my aunt never spared the rod, she also never spared expressing love for my imaginative, far-fetched stories. She would encourage me to keep being creative and bold—just not to rip any more pages out of the books she worked hard to provide. I likely never will fully grasp the scale of my grief for my aunt, but my recognition of formative memories such as these will bring me closer each day to coming to terms with what the loss of a mother means.

Next week, I’ll resume my scrutiny of politics and everything else—not because I would have forgotten about my aunt or everything I have written here. Quite the opposite; my continued devotion to contributing to the national diary through each weekly column is also a tribute and my way of grieving a mother who nurtured the writer in me. • Dr De Matas is an assistant professor at the University of Texas Medical Branch.

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