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A letter to my late mum: For my eternally beautiful mother who shall never age beyond 40 years

Decades after the writer lost her mother as a young child, she writes this touching tribute dedicated to her late mum, and to all the mothers out there who have given their families the best of their lives and love. This is the second instalment of CNA Women’s Mother’s Day series.

A letter to my late mum: For my eternally beautiful mother who shall never age beyond 40 years

My late mother, Lily Foo Fong Lan, and me, shortly before she passed away. (Photo: Annie Tan)

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Dear Mama,

When you died, I did not cry.

I did not know how it happened. No one warned me about it. One day, I just came home to find you lying motionless in the living room, transfigured with the preternatural beauty of a Madame Tussauds wax figure.

You were 40, snatched away in the summer of your life by a sudden asthma attack. I was four, and did not yet know what death was.

I stood amidst the sea of grief around me. But my own eyes were dry.

There was not a bruise on your face. There were no wounds on your body. How could I know that you would never hold my hand again, laugh with me, soothe my groans, or wipe away my tears?

How could I know that no one would ever love me so unconditionally and selflessly again?

My mother teaching me to swim at Sembawang Park. (Photo: Annie Tan)

The loss of a mother is not something one immediately understands. It is a loss that echoes slowly through the seasons of our lives – through the happiest and loneliest years.

YOUR GARDEN OF MAGIC

After you died, Papa had to drive a taxi to support us, so we became latchkey kids. Whether from grief or isolation, Brother became socially withdrawn, and our once lively home was shrouded in silence.

But I never felt entirely alone. Because you left me with a garden full of ixoras, orchids and roses, and a chiku tree.

My brother as a child amid our garden of orchids in our childhood home. (Photo: Annie Tan)

The flowers withered quickly without your loving care. They left me with a lifelong yearning for the beautiful and fragile. As I grew up, every flower and foliage was you. Every garden felt like home. Every watery Monet was a eulogy.

But the chiku tree did not die. It bent over our gate like a guardian spirit. Each day, it bore an abundance of fruit. At night, bats would hover around it, transforming it into a gothical and magical portal.

My mother and I standing in front of our ever-fruitful chiku tree. (Photo: Annie Tan)

Your chiku tree bore such sweet fruit that neighbours and strangers asked to graft it. But their graft never bore the same sweet fruit. And though I never told anyone this, I have always believed that your spirit and love endured through that mythical tree.

So it was that many years later, when the house was sold and the tree felled, I was finally able to cry for your loss.

I don’t eat chikus anymore because the chikus I have eaten since never tasted as sweet. But I still carry your chiku tree in my heart, along with a secret belief in magic and enduring love. 

CONCEIVING MY BROTHER AND ME

Because you had left when I was so young, I remember so little of you. So I began filling the fragments of my memory with accounts from people who knew you – stories of how beautiful you were, how you ran a sewing business and bought your own house in your youth, how you met and married Papa, and how much you loved us all.

One of the stories that never left me was how hard you tried to conceive the two of us.

Papa said you could not conceive for many years. After visiting many doctors, you discovered that you had blocked or damaged fallopian tubes – the details are now fudgy. But I knew you underwent surgery to fix it.

Many years later, when the house was sold and the tree felled, I was finally able to cry for your loss.

Shortly after, you were both overjoyed to discover that you were pregnant. However, that happiness was shortlived. You miscarried at three months. Papa said it was the worst day of your lives and both of you wept bitterly.

If I had been in your shoes, I might have given up after that heartbreak. But you didn’t. You believed in us even before we were born. And wanted us so much that you pushed through the pain. And that is how my brother and I came into this world.

But I did not become worthy of your belief in me. I grew into a trainwreck of a teenager. I did not know how to navigate the world of relationships or my own complex emotions.

So I crashed and burnt through my teenage years with self-pity and self-loathing. I skipped school and stumbled through love and friendships.

Our only trip as a family of four. Though I can no longer remember where we went, we were very happy. (Photo: Annie Tan)

But always, at my lowest points, when I felt worthless, I would remember how much you believed in me, loved me and did everything you could to give me life.

Though I could not understand your love for me, I wanted to be deserving of it. And that was how I slowly learnt to love myself.

YOUR MOTHERHOOD LEGACY

Many years later, I became a mother myself – I have a daughter and son, just like you did.

The minute I held them in my arms, I loved them – without question, without reason, without restraint. Becoming a mother has helped me better understand your blind love for me.

To the first woman who held my hand – thank you for loving me. (Photo: Annie Tan)

Because I grew up without a mother, I became the mother I wished I had.

Every morning, I kiss my kids – your grandkids – awake. Every afternoon, I pick them up from school. Every night, we have dinner together. When they cry, I hug them close. When they laugh, I throw my head back and guffaw with them.

We live beside a park, and I spend many evenings there, soaking in the magic of trees and flowers that you loved so much, and lying on the grass, watching the clouds roll by. 

Their births changed my life. I stopped working late nights or travelling for work. I also stopped stumbling for complex answers, or chasing elusive success and happiness. I embraced a simpler life.

YOUR UNDYING MEMORY

That is how, after my tumultuous teenage and early adult years, I think I have finally made peace with life. But there are days when I still wish you were around to guide me.

Without you, I stumbled into womanhood. You were not around when my body started changing and my period came.

Papa had to fumble with training bras and sanitary pads. You will surely laugh if you saw how a salesgirl eyed him suspiciously at the bra shop, or how he sheepishly dashed out of the supermarket after his first sanitary pads purchase.

I fell in love and experienced my first heartbreak without you. How I wished you were around to hug me when I cried.

I became a mother without you. And in future, I will go through menopause without your wisdom.

A photo of my son and daughter, whom I named Lily in loving memory of my mother. (Photo: Annie Tan)

For you, time stopped at the age of 40, resplendent in your unchanging beauty. But I will age and journey through my winter years without you.

But unlike many of my friends who dread ageing, I shall learn to embrace my silvery hair and wrinkles. Because of you, I know growing old is not a given, but a privilege.

If I am lucky, I shall get to watch my children grow up, and watch their children grow and explore worlds beyond our imagination because of the gift of life and love you have given me.

Though your journey so abruptly ended decades ago, we shall take you and your memory on this journey with us. That is why I named my daughter Lily. She was named after you.

Love,
Annie

CNA Women is a section on CNA Lifestyle that seeks to inform, empower and inspire the modern woman. If you have women-related news, issues and ideas to share with us, email CNAWomen [at] mediacorp.com.sg.

Source: CNA/pc

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