Tomorrow is six months since my mum passed. I’m not keeping count of the days or months, but the 19^th is difficult to forget. It’s etched in my heart and head, as is my mum.

I see my mum every day, everywhere. I have a photo wall, photos on my side table and more photos on a display unit in my home office. They are some of my favourite poses of her. She’s relaxed, playful, and laughing. Captured over the years and more recently. On her own, with her children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, and sons and daughters’ in-law. She doesn’t look serious. Nor is she standing upright with her arms by her side, which was her signature stance. Getting my mum to be natural and smile/laugh for photos was a job. Brothers 1 and 2 used to resort to tickling her before taking photos.

I’m reminded of my mum every day. I walk past her gold chain sitting in her stainless steel watering-can shaped pourer. With SM, her initials, embossed on it. I know she’d rather I wear her chain but she also knows that I’m not that into gold jewellery. I open my wardrobe. Her sarees are there, hanging from the rails. Her blanket, pillow-cases, her hand and personal towels, her sarongs, her tatty old, green saree blouse, and her well-worn cotton, purple floral saree enjoy residence with my shorts and t-shirts. I smell her clothes, give them a little hug, and smile. Nice.

Her 70^th birthday cake decorations are still in my freezer. Her three little white Daiso cotton carrier bags, where she kept her Tamil books, combs, purses, hairpins, I now store my skin care products. Actually, the Daiso bags are mine. I gave them to her. For some reason, whenever she saw me with a new carrier bag not handbag, she would ask if she could have it. I wear her t-shirts. She became progressively thinner and smaller as she got older. Her duck mug sits in my kitchen. The origami-like bird that she built from dried coconut leaves is still in her condo. All ignite a whirlwind of memories.

I speak to my mum every day, in my head. I speak to my siblings particularly sister number 3 on the telephone, and our conversations invariably include or veer towards our mum. It would be something she had said or the way she had said it that was so peculiar to her. We’d laugh at her cheekiness. Comment on how it was so typically our Ama. We’d go a little quiet, sad because she’s not with us. We then console ourselves that our mum had a good life, and indeed, she did.

It’s wonderfully nice that I remember, I think about, talk to, and talk about my mum. And, write about her. It’s incredibly nice that she’s so loved and so missed.  I’ve known my mum all my life. She was my constant. She was either in the forefront or background, but always there for me.  Which is why it’s not easy living/being without her.  I miss her, yes, but I also know she couldn’t have gone on much longer at her age and with her ailments.

So thankfully, I am gradually and increasingly thinking, appreciating and being grateful for not the loss of her but for the over 60 years that I’ve had her in my life. I am the one who has had a good run. I am the one who was blessed with a loving, caring, cheeky, chatty, and compos mentis mum, who lived to a grand old age of over 90.

Because of her and with her, I have many treasured memories and experiences. I look at a photo, and instantly I have visuals playing in my head. I smile, chuckle, laugh.  There is a photo of her holding a mango peel vertically, showing off its exceptionally long length. She was proud of her prowess at peeling mangoes and other fruits quickly and without damaging/tearing their skin. There is one with her sitting cross-legged in her sarong, on her blue sofa, talking on the telephone. I told her I was going to take a photo, and she gave me a toothless grin (I had removed her dentures before bedtime), and posed for me. You wouldn’t know it by looking at her but my mum was quick with retorts and funny, and laughed easily. Almost in a childlike way. I’m fortunate to be my mum’s daughter.

Yes, I know. Yes, I understand. I/we will always have personal/career/business/medicines and food to buy or cook/family commitments/mobile notifications to attend to. So, for what it’s worth, I think when we are with our still living parents, spouses and loved ones, it’s nice to try to be in the present, have meaningful or silly conversations and value the time together, while we can.