LETTER TO MY MUM PART 4

 

Hi Mama,

I’m writing you a eulogy again.
Not the kind read in hushed chapels or printed in Sunday programs,
but the kind I write with trembling fingers on restless nights.
The kind stitched with memory and mourning.

Some months ago, Shola wanted pounded yam, and her mom prepared it. I cried when she told me. I cried because I was jealous,jealous because she still has her mother and a home to run to when life gets tough. I was ashamed of how jealous I was when Japhet told me his mother bought him birthday gifts, and when Phil said his mother wanted his crocs. I don’t like that emotion because I love them so much, and I want them to have their mothers too, but I just miss you so much, and I take it the wrong way. I’m sorry.

I talk about you all the time. The other day, I was teaching Sarah how to cook.
“Let it fry like Mama used to,” I said,
stirring groundnut soup with your memory.
I didn’t notice when the tears started falling.
Later, I told her it was just a bad day.

Sometimes I fear I’ve made you into a saint too polished,
a god too far.
I tell everyone who has ears how peaceful, how kind, generous, loving, and good you were. And sometimes I wonder if that’s the only version I saw,if there was more. And if this is how Sarah sees me too—if she knows there is more and more to me.

I want to see you and ask you hard questions like:
Do you miss us?
What do you regret?
Did you ever think I was too much, too loud, too sensitive?
What did you miss eating?
Are you proud of the woman I’ve become?
Do you really see me?
Are you disappointed?

Will you want a remembrance party?
Will you want me to write a book solely about you?
I want to know what you would want from me badly.
I want to do it. I want to honour you the right way.
I want to feel like I am loving you properly, even now.

Over the last few months, I needed you to help me make a decision. I cried so much because I thought that if you were here, it would be easy. I’d follow blindly. I would have argued, but I’m sure you had my best interest at heart, and I’d follow blindly. I needed you to talk to me,to tell me what to say, how to say it, dress me up!!

Your three grandchildren are growing, Mama.
I whisper your name into their ears,
tell them they come from love, from you.
Czar is grown and inquisitive. He asked what I meant,
and I just kept repeating it.
I never want them to forget you. I love them so much

Life feels so fulfilling when I look at the community I birthed out of our shared love of literature. I want to protect it with all I have. I want to protect the people who ensure that it doesn’t break. I want to protect the people in it. I want to give all I have to it. And sometimes I’m scared that I’m pouring too much, and I fear the day it breaks. I hope it doesn’t. I don’t want it to!

I’ve found comfort in friendships too,
Wednesday evenings filled with honest noise, laughter, realization, repentance, and joy;
Thursdays with music and poetry;
Fridays spent dissecting dilemmas, judging, and basking in what it means to be human.
It’s beautiful, Mama. I look at them and realize that we are all trying to be alive in ways that matter.

Still, I want more.
To grow this community, to write better, to publish too,
to say no without guilt,
to understand the corporate jungle,
to choose myself again and again,
and to never stop reaching.
I want to be unstoppable.

I’ve started caring for myself more.
It’s harder with the weight of money and sacrifice,
but I’m learning.
When my blood pressure spiked, I saw Daddy break,
and I promised I wouldn’t let that happen again.
Nothing is worth my health at the end of the day.

I still break promises to myself,
but I’ve learned that grace is a language I must also speak, gently and loudly to myself.
One day I know what I want; the next, I drift.
It’s hard to dream with Tinubu as president.
I wish you were here,
to hear your views on surrogacy,
on the student loan saga,
on content creation and remote jobs.
You would love Fabs biscuit—especially when it is mixed with Ribena.
Adire is making a comeback, and Precious is killing it! Have you seen her designs?

It’s been a while, Mama.
But I want you to know—
I am trying.
Trying to live, not just survive.
Trying to love myself.
Trying to forgive myself.
Trying to become the woman you prayed for.

I love you.
Rest on.