The Date I Can Never Celebrate the Same Way

19 MAY

My mother had late-stage cancer, and deep down, I knew the writing was on the wall. Everyone did. Yet knowing a storm is coming does not stop you from getting wet when it arrives.

People talk about death as a single moment, but they rarely talk about what comes before it. They never tell you what it feels like to know someone is leaving. To watch the clock tick down while pretending it isn’t. To learn how to say goodbye to someone who has watched your entire life unfold.

How do you say goodbye to the person who gave you your name before you could speak it? The person who gave you the colour of your eyes, and a place in the world before you even knew what a world was?

I never found an answer.

When she passed away on my birthday, it felt as though life had handed me a banner I never asked to carry. While others celebrate growing older each year, my birthday became tied forever to loss — a date marked by both beginnings and endings.

Her death brought grief, but it brought something else too. It felt like the last chapter of my childhood closed overnight. Looking toward the future terrified me. Looking in the mirror terrified me too

The hardest part was not just losing her — it was losing the chance to know her

Today, the lessons she taught me survive like folklore. They are no longer her words because I can barely remember them. Instead, they live in stories told by relatives, friends, and neighbours. Stories about the people , the sacrifices and the kindness she carried through life.

But stories change as they travel from one person to another. Like a folktale passed down through generations, details blur, meanings shift, and memories become larger than life. Who knows how much is truth and how much is admiration woven into the telling?

Yet maybe that is how people live on.

Maybe that is why I still feel guided by someone whose voice I can no longer hear.

Time, as people say, heals all wounds — or at least teaches us how to live with them.I’ve mostly made peace with it now.

But every now and then, I catch myself wanting to call someone “mumma” — to share good news, ask for advice, or complain about life. Then I remember the number won’t answer.

I guess that’s the strange thing about losing a parent. You don’t spend your life looking for another mother; you spend it occasionally wishing you still had yours.

And every birthday, I’m reminded that my mom really committed to being unforgettable.

Maybe that’s life’s greatest irony: The day that gave me life also stole the one that provided it to me.