I did not see my Nani often. Distance made her feel like a quiet presence in the background of our lives, someone we loved deeply but rarely held. As children, we never understood what those visits truly meant. When she came to stay with us, the house felt different warmer, fuller, softer. She carried a love that didn’t need to be loud to be felt. At the time, we thought those days were ordinary, sometimes even inconvenient. We didn’t realise they were becoming memories, carefully and silently shaping our hearts.
She gave her love so freely. A Nani who smiled with her whole soul, who made us feel safe without saying a word. She was not just a grandmother — she was a mother who sacrificed endlessly, a sister who stood strong through hardship, a daughter who carried the weight of generations. Now she is not here to watch her grandchildren grow into who they are becoming. She is not here to see their laughter change, their lives unfold. And yet, her presence lingers in everything. Sitting beside her grave, the world feels unbearably quiet, and still it feels as though she was here only yesterday. As if time has frozen between the love she gave and the loss we carry.
Her oldest son, my father, carries the deepest wound. He crosses oceans and continents, not to be reunited with her, but to sit beside the place where she now rests. He goes searching for a mother’s love that can no longer be touched, only remembered. Even after four years, the pain has not softened. Grief does not fade with time — it changes shape, but it never truly leaves. I see it in the way he grows silent, in the way his eyes hold tears he refuses to let fall. Watching my father grieve is one of the hardest things I have ever known. A son should never have to stand so far from his mother, longing for a love that once surrounded him.
I write this with a heavy heart, as a dedication to loss and to love that never dies. To missing someone in moments big and small. To wishing they were beside you during laughter, during sadness, during the ordinary days that suddenly feel empty without them. To craving one more conversation, one more smile, one more embrace that can never come.
Some losses never make sense. Some absences are felt more than any presence ever could be. And no matter how much time passes, no matter how much life moves forward, there is nothing in this world as pure, as powerful, or as irreplaceable as a mother’s love.
Just a thought, Just a poem !
Thought
