On losing my mum and the version of me that left with her

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8 mins read . Reflection + grief writing . April 1, 2026

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I took a break from writing… or at least that’s what it looks like.

Maybe I’ve just been… slow with it. Or a little lazy, if I’m being honest.

Ramadan ended about a week ago, and I think I’m only just finding my way back into things.

But in between that “break,” I’ve still been sitting with myself, like I always do. Looking at my life and my situation, and asking how I can make it better.

Somewhere in all of that, I realised I needed to rest more. To give myself the kind of grace I’m always so quick to give to everyone else, but somehow never to myself.

Because if I’m being honest, the past few weeks have been heavy. I’ve been deeply stressed.

During one of those moments of deep reflection, I came to a quiet but difficult conclusion.
I am still grieving.

And maybe the grieving doesn’t actually end. Maybe it’s something you learn to settle into, rather than something you move on from.

I am grieving my mum.

But not just her.

I’m also grieving the version of myself that left with her.

Because when she took her last breath, she didn’t just go alone. 

She took a part of me with her. The version of me that existed before loss. The version of me that didn’t sit this closely with grief.

Now, I find myself shoulder to shoulder with it, still in disbelief, still trying to understand the aftermath of losing someone you love, and struggling, in ways I can’t always explain, to fully accept that this is real.

I don’t even know how much longer I have to grieve, and the whole thing is draining.

Did I really just say “how much longer”?

That alone shows I’m still trying to measure something that doesn’t have an ending.

Because grief like this isn’t temporary. It doesn’t wrap up neatly or give you closure.

It’s not like a romantic relationship where you can eventually move on and meet someone else.

This is my mum.

There’s no replacement for that. No version you can find again somewhere else.

So maybe this isn’t something I’ll ever “finish.”
Maybe it’s just something I carry.

I think, as human beings, we’re taught to fight off anything that feels negative. To avoid it, suppress it, move past it as quickly as possible.

But like I always say, the negative and the positive have always existed side by side. One doesn’t cancel out the other, they coexist.

Even in science, oppositely charged particles are naturally drawn to each other, forming something stable.

Maybe we’re not meant to get rid of the difficult parts of our lives. Maybe we’re meant to learn how to hold both.

To place them at the same table.

To sit with joy without denying grief.
To carry loss without losing ourselves completely.

Because some things don’t leave us.

Maybe that’s why I keep counting the days, trying to measure my grief with a human mindset, hoping it will eventually come to an end.

But the truth is… it won’t.

This is something I’ll carry for a long time and maybe forever.

And I know there are people who would call that “negative,” who believe everything should be reframed into something lighter, something easier to hold.

But this isn’t negativity.

It’s just the truth.

The depth of grief isn’t spoken about enough. Just like other topical issues that have started gaining momentum, where people are now speaking more openly about the deeper things that affect us as humans in society, thanks to social media, grief still somehow remains untouched.

Grief, in the eyes of people, is like this: “you are going to be sad for a while, but it’s just a while, not forever. So you should move on, try to be happy, try to create things that make yourself happy”

Like, if it was that easy to “just move on,” I would not have already moved on. Even the empathetic people do their best, but after a while they just shrug, and when you start to feel too unbearable, they call you out like, stop being a sad dummy.

Loads of changes come with grieving. Mentally, physically, emotionally, and a bunch of other things with no name to them. Your view of the world, your view of people… it all shifts.

It’s just very difficult. The disbelief, the pain, the regrets, the denial, the anger, and many more.

Before my encounter with grief, I casually read about it in books, where writers, to the best of their ability, try to describe grieving. And from people around me who had lost a loved one, I would just sympathise and empathise with them.

just understood losing a loved one to be something sad. I didn’t know how heavy it was until I experienced it personally.

I remember reading Notes on Grief by Chimamanda years before my mum passed away. Back then, it was with a sympathetic and empathetic feeling, but not on the same scale as when I read it again last year, when I could fully relate to her grief.

Never in my life did I think I would be doing my twenties without my mother, or even the years ahead of me. I knew at some point she would have to leave, but I didn’t expect it to be so soon.

I am still in disbelief.

Nearly three years later, after her death, I still say to myself, “let me tell my mum about this,” only for my head to catch up with reality seconds later ,like, “she is dead.”

I couldn’t hold the hands of death on my mum, so yeah, I have been grieving since then, even before she passed on.I

t’s cancer, an illness that you watch slowly zap the life out of your loved one, with this burning hope for better health. I used “flame” metaphorically, because nobody can really catch flames. Even if you think you can, it’s an illusion.

Then you watch them slowly deteriorate, until it’s a forever goodbye.

And in that moment, whether you got the chance to say goodbye or not, they take a part of you with them as they pass away.

I have never fought for my life and well-being the way I have been fighting ever since my mum passed away. It’s been a really tough battle.

Nothing makes sense to me.I view the world now as a simulation. I question everything, only to end up with no answers, because every answer leads to more questions.

I don’t have the proper words to describe the feeling of grief. The words just don’t land properly.

I remember coming across a TikTok video of a lady warning people not to die from grief. It was triggering for me, but I had to sit with it, and it made me further understand my situation and how much emotional distress I have been in.

The last time I had a proper sleep was the night before my mum passed away.

Since then, I find myself waking up randomly at night whenever I try to sleep. I only get seconds of sleep in a day, and even if it all adds up, it’s just about an hour or two in a 24-hour cycle.

My diet is a bit messed up. I am either eating too much or deliberately starving myself, which has caused me severe constipation.

My social life feels like it’s waiting for me to use a defibrillator on it.

My brain has stopped coordinating with my eyes. You could be right in front of me, but it would take a while for me to actually register you.

Oh, the damage to my eyes that comes with crying every day. The forgetting.

I would pause in the middle of conversations, trying to remember where I am, like I didn’t walk myself there.

I loved being in the dark, and winter was always my favourite, because it gave me longer days to cry in public without being noticed.

I still can’t function properly, and neither can my life, my career, or anything around me. It all felt like a huge pile of sadness, tangled together.

Happiness for me was like rain in the desert. And there are loads of other things I still can’t even put into words yet.

I just do whatever the day brings. Things I used to like have become foreign to me.

And in between everything, trying to make sense of my life after the death of my mum, I have just calmly accepted that a part of me was taken with her.

P.S: I feel like I could still write better about how I feel, but a lot of what could have gone into this writing was left behind.

“Cognitive drift.”

The feelings live in my head longer than they live on the page, still unable to be fully described.