I live in hope

My mother is dead. A simple sentence, grammar tells us. A simple sentence that carries the weight of the world. A simple sentence that speaks volumes and yet holds a whole universe of things unsaid.

My mother is dead. She fell prey to the virus of our times, she’s now a statistic, a single count in the daily death toll published everywhere; a victim of her immune system and a microscopic foe.

I hate the word “victim” with all its implied passivity and submission; my mother was not a victim. She fought with all her strength. I like to believe that at the end, when she realised her body did not have any fight left, she made the choice to leave. To leave the physical, and enter the ethereal. We tell ourselves it’s better this way, that her body would have been too damaged to allow her to live as she would have wanted, that she wouldn’t have wanted to live the diminished life that would have been her lot.

My mother believed that the soul lives on, the soul leaves this miserable plane of existence behind and moves on towards higher planes, towards the ultimate, towards the light. She believed that grieving for the person hurts the soul, traps it on this plane, doesn’t allow it to move on in peace. She lived this belief when her parents moved on, celebrated their lives with great joy, and prayed for their souls to ascend to the light. She was a pure person, spiritual and deep. She eschewed rituals, reaching straight for the core instead.

I don’t know what I believe, I’m certainly neither pure nor spiritual. But I will honor her life and abide by her wishes to the best of my ability. I will celebrate the joy she brought to all those around her, I will continue to learn from her.

My mother is dead. But her spirit lives on. It lives on within her family. It lives on in this silly blog which she pushed me to write. If there’s one thing I’m eternally grateful for, it is that I started writing it while she was still here in the flesh. She was able to read a few pieces, and she loved them.

My mother is dead. But she will live on in our memories, she will live on in my writings, she will live on in her grandchildren, whom she adored. Her soul is free now, merged with the light.

My mother is dead. We live on joyously, to make her proud, to play the cards we have been dealt with grace. One day, we might meet again. I live in hope.