I Didn't Cry When My Mother Died

Today makes thirteen years since my mother died. I was thirteen when it happened, which means the math finally caught up with me this year. Half my life with her, half without her.

I didn’t cry when she died. Not that week, and if I’m honest, not for the first few years. I went back to boarding school. I answered “I’m fine” so many times I started to believe it. Adults kept telling me how strong I was, and I wore that word like a uniform, because strong was easier than whatever the real thing was. Nothing about me was fine. My heart had gone numb to keep me standing, and at thirteen, that was probably mercy.

The tears showed up years later, usually without warning. I ended up grieving at 18, at 20, at 23, what actually happened to me at 13. Nobody tells you grief can run on a delay like that. Mine did. If yours is doing the same, you are not broken, and you are not behind. Late tears still count.

What I remember most about the numb years is who carried me through them. Neighbors. Aunties. Teachers. Community at church. A whole community closed around one boy and refused to let him fall. “I am because we are.” My mother taught me to pray, and it took me years before I could pray about her, but I got there. That was when the real healing started, letting it hurt instead of outrunning it.

The grief never left. It just changed. These days it mostly shows up as love with nowhere to go. I still reach for my phone when good news lands, wanting to call her. A song will do it (Shona Roman Catholic Hymns). A plate of food made the way she made it. Days like today. I used to fight those waves. Now I let them come, because they feel less like setbacks and more like visits.

I don’t have a single selfie with my mother. Smartphones weren’t part of our world, unfortunately (Got my first smartphone the same year after she died, thanks to my sister). Everything I have of her fits in a few old prints, her in her church blues in a frame on a wall back home, her holding me as a baby in a photo so faded it’s half memory. I would trade almost anything for one blurry video of her laughing.

So if your parents are alive, take the selfie. Take twenty; they’ll complain and pose anyway. Record your mother singing off-key in the kitchen. Keep the voice notes. Ask your father the questions you’ve been postponing. Go home when you can, hug them a beat longer than usual, and sometimes leave the phone in your pocket completely, because being fully there is a memory too. You will never regret one photo too many. I promise you the math on this one.

Thirteen years with her. Thirteen years without her. The healing came late, but it came.

Zorora murugare, Amai.

Kuda

P.S. If your mother is a phone call away, make that call today. Tell her the thing you keep saving. And if she isn’t, write it in your journal. Late tears count!