As I sit down to write you this letter, I realise how much I don’t know. I don’t know exactly what I want this letter to be, but I know, with some certainty, what I don’t want it to be, perhaps that is enough for now.

I hope this week has been kind to you. I hope you haven’t been measuring your becoming against a clock or treating it as though it has a deadline you must meet.

I hope you know that somewhere, someone (a Bubble) is thinking of you, rooting for you, and wishing you well, even from a distance.

I pray this week ends in your favour, just as you planned it, and if it doesn’t, I hope you remember that one week is not the sum of your life. There will be another Wednesday, another morning, and another chance to try.

Please be kind to yourself.

I’ll see you next Wednesday.

Sealed with love,
Nadine🩷

Comment

It is incredibly unfair how life unfolds as it sees fit. I woke up one day, just as I had every other day, but the difference was that I watched my worst nightmare become my reality, and yet, all I could do, and was expected to do, was accept it. How does life prepare anyone for this kind of experience? I am simply expected to bear it because it is what I have been given. 

Life is so fickle, but we don't always remember just how fickle it is until you wake up one day to see someone you've known all your life snatched by death. The fact that something as precious as life itself can be so fragile is a concept I do not think I will ever fully comprehend. My mother became ill sometime in March, and it was the first time she had actually been sick in her entire life, apart from the occasional headaches, typhoid, and malaria.

I have imagined many terrible things in this world. I have constructed countless horror and utterly tragic scenes in my mind and have even bawled from the fear of some of them, but not once did I imagine a world without my mother. It was simply inconceivable until it happened.

My mother looked like 90s material on her sickbed. She was the strongest woman I have ever known. Even when things became grim and grotesquely ugly, there was never a trace of fear in her eyes.

“Mummy, are you okay?”

“Yes.”

“Mummy, are you breathing fine?”

“Yes, but just pray for me.”

Doctor: on a scale of one to ten, ma please rate the pain you're feeling. 

Mum: 8/10 

(Doctor proceeds to check) 

Doctor: No way! Ma'am, this is a 10/10 pain. 

My mother was a little trypanophobic. I watched her go from flinching and closing her eyes whenever the doctor tried to locate a vein for an IV, blood draw, or transfusion, to eventually sitting there and watching the entire process. She would extend her hand and stare at the needle as it entered her vein. Unmoved.

How devastating it is to watch someone you love endure so much and be completely powerless to take even a fraction of their suffering upon yourself, simply to make it a little lighter for them.

My mother was so strong that the day I knew things had become horrendously ugly was the day she asked me to carry her legs. That was two days before she passed. 

She was never the kind of person to ask for help. She was the kind of person who, if something needed to be done, would notice first and do it herself. She waited for no one. She needed no one to tell her what to do. She simply got up and did it.

So when my mother could no longer move her own body, I knew… but in a way, I didn’t know. It was terrifying. I felt it before I could even process the word. My stomach dropped. A sickening wave of nausea rose through me, my legs suddenly felt weightless, and for a moment, I could barely breathe. It was my first breaking point.

To watch the woman I loved so fiercely, the woman who had always carried herself, begin to need someone to carry her, was to watch love become anxiety.

I remember the first night I spent in the hospital alone with her. I barely blinked throughout the night because I knew Mummy would not have blinked if I were the one lying on that bed, but I remember thinking about how beautiful it is to surrender your sleep for someone who had sacrificed hers for you countless times before. 

I was willing to do it a thousand times for my mother, but not in a hospital, with her lying on that bed in ICU, tethered to tubes, a web of wires, monitors, and machines. Perhaps somewhere in her nineties,  after she had lived a long, full life.

I was so hopeful.

My faith was fiercely steadfast.

It was 2 a.m. that night when I felt an overwhelming urge to pray for my mother, and I did. I held her hands, and we prayed.

The last time I saw her before she passed, I prayed too. Our final conversation was about God.

I told her, “Mummy, God will not fail you. He will not put you to shame. You have laboured in His vineyard, and for all we know, He is a good God and a rewarder of good works. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but God delivers them from them all. Every word of God is flawless, and He is a shield to those who take refuge in Him.”

How do I stop myself from wondering whether my words were untrue? Whether they failed to accomplish what I believed they would? Was my faith not strong enough? Was it because I didn't quote Bible verses? The questions are endless.

What is my hope here if I have watched someone who did everything right still died at fifty-four?

She ate well because she wanted to remain healthy. She prayed without ceasing. She served God wholeheartedly and lived selflessly. She gave of herself generously.

To watch someone work all their life tirelessly -since the moment they were old enough to walk, because you do not get to choose where you come from - plan for the future, build towards it, and lay so many foundations without ever knowing that they would not be there to witness what they had built, is to watch life lose its colour in every sense of the word.

My mother walked through fire.

She experienced almost every kind of pain there is to experience in this fucked-up world. She was once robbed by armed men while she was with her newborn. One time she rushed home from work only to walk through physical fire to rescue her children when our house was engulfed in flames. She built a life from somewhere far below scratch. She endured the loss of her father and three siblings. She watched her daughter die because she could not save her. She lost a child only a few days after birth. There were miscarriages. There were seasons of waiting. There were disappointments that could have broken anyone.

And just when life began to look and feel good to her, death rudely came knocking.

Yet, despite the magnitude of the pain my mother endured, she remained a radiant and constant source of joy. She carried so much joy and light within her that she had enough to give away, even to those who considered themselves her enemies.

How did I go from being someone who could not imagine life without Mummy, to someone who now has to live a life without her, and with enormous spaces where she used to be?

I have mourned before, but only now have I touched the core of grief.

This loss has revealed an entirely different dimension of mourning. There is such a thing as ordinary mourning, and then there is the kind of grief that reaches deep into your understanding of existence itself. It is not simply, “I miss this person.” It is, “The world in which this person existed has disappeared. So who am I now? What is life now? How do I continue after something this devastating and life-altering has happened?”

I have experienced grief before, but only now do I understand that it has no boundary, no definitive end, no discernible finish line.

I have become a maker of cages. I imprison certain thoughts because I do not know whether I can survive experiencing all of them simultaneously.

Grief is disorienting and destabilising in its enormity. It shakes the foundations you previously stood on. It makes the world feel unfamiliar. 

It is a dark, bottomless pit, ready to swallow as much of you as you are willing to give it. I force my mind to remain shallow because I know that going deep means coming undone and being consumed by the unknown. I stay on the surface because, there, the depths are bearable. I dare not think too deeply, lest I be swallowed by pain and nihilism, the terrifying circle of believing that nothing matters because everything ends eventually.

What is the point of loving when you can lose?

What is the point of building a life when it can all be destroyed?

What is the point of tomorrow?

I do not know what this will become.

I do not know who I will become because this grief has forced a new skin upon me. I do not know what this loss means. I do not know how my life will continue from here.

I can tolerate not knowing, but I am not ready, and I cannot declare that there is no meaning to any of this. Perhaps one day, the meaning will reveal itself to me, but for now, I do not know what it means.

If you read to this point, just know that you are holding space for a grieving girl. Thank you🥹🩷

Bye for now, Bubble 🫧🌸🩷

I'll see you again on Saturday!