001: Breathing The Same Air

The Year. It ends.

“Once somebody is dead, the world reveals all the things they might have enjoyed if they weren’t.” - Elizabeth McCraken

In the seven months and twenty-two days since my mother’s soul returned to her Creator, I witnessed an abundance of roses blooming in my parents' garden. I gathered around smoky crackling fires with her grandchildren. I made hot strong tea for her friends and brewed it in her favourite teapot. I served it with halva made with more nuts and raisins than seemed reasonable. 

I crocheted a baby hat in the same bright marigold she painted her kitchen walls. I read biographies, memoirs and poems about mothers and daughters. I opened her copy of the Quran and recited from it, stopping to read the notes in the margins.  I laughed at the antics of the backyard squirrels and ran errands with my father.

Together we filled the house with people, food and gifts on Eid. I listened to the stories and memories of Mama before she was mama, some were familiar and some were new, all were completely enjoyable. Together we laughed at her clever turns of phrase and thought up fresh ones.

I marvelled at a magnificent autumn and delighted in the salmon leaping upriver. On picnics I poured from the thermos full of mixed chai and passed around a tupperware layered with sandwiches as birds gracefully swept across the sky. In the forest I saw a doe and both it and I stayed still while we watched one another.

I went for long drives and sang all the songs she enjoyed hearing me sing. I sat under blue skies, grey skies, pink and purple skies. I stared out into a placid ocean and an angry lake. I made my way to enormous trees freshly uprooted by hurricane winds and combed my fingers through the exposed roots the same way she would comb her fingers through my hair, and I considered folding myself into the massive craters left behind.

In the seven months and twenty-two days since my mother’s soul returned to her Creator, I lost both my words and my footing. When the sparkling snow finally descends, I wish for it to blanket me in its silent and numbing embrace.

The snows of December, for decades, heralded our reunion. I used the holiday season to travel back to my mother’s hearth and warmth and questions and preparations. Dropping my baggage at the door and collecting, in its place, all the parts of myself that existed only there, with her.

But there will be no more December reunions. Instead I wrap myself up in a quilt and watch both the snow and my heart fall.

This year, this very one which is hours away from ending - has revealed itself to be the last one I will ever welcome in with my mama.

The last I will enter with the sound of her whispered prayers for a blessed year to come. The last in which she and I will hold hands, puzzle a problem, marvel at a view, come in for a hug, share a coffee, receive Ramadan, find forgotten pieces of stories and remember all the years that came before.

For five months and nine days before my mother’s soul returned to her Creator, we breathed the same air. We shared this same year. I couldn’t let it go without saying so.

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I posted this as a tribute to my mother for Mother’s Day in 2015, and she commented almost immediately. This year, the algorithm reminded me of the exchange the day after Mama passed. With prayers and blessings for the mothers who raised us with love and kindness.

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