Dear mum,
Long time no write 😅 but today is the eighth anniversary of your passing and because I turned 38 this year (and 3 and 8 are our numbers), here I am.
I last wrote you a letter in 2021 for your fourth anniversary, and in the four years since then I am glad to let you know that grief has gotten easier to live with. Some days I carry you in the gentle weight of memory, other days grief drags me back into the jagged pain of loss. But overall, grief is no longer the thing I carry everywhere, filling my thoughts and shaping my world.
Except this year, because I have hit the lowest of lows this year. Lows so low that if they went any lower I would definitely maybe be dead. And because of those low lows, I am grieving you like it has been months, rather than years, since your passing.
I have spent the last few months taking stock of the year and one thing that is abundantly clear is that if you were still alive I definitely maybe would not have experienced my low lows. Or even if I did, they would not be lows so low that if they went any lower I would definitely maybe be dead. And the reason I say that is because the cliché that there is nothing like a mother’s love could not be truer if it tried. And if there is nothing like a mother’s love, what of a mother’s absence?
This year has really opened my eyes to how much I lost by losing you. And how much of what I lost cannot be replaced because there is nothing like a mother’s love. 2025 has painfully peeled back the layers of all the other things I lost when you died, one of them being a close-knit family, because you were the glue that held us together and without you we are no longer as close as we used to be. This year the loss of a home, coupled with the loss of closeness to people to love and be loved by in that home, has struck me harder than it has at any point in the eight years since we lost you. I see now that I sometimes took the Kileleshwa get-togethers for granted, and only in their absence do I fully understand how much your presence held us together, in health and, later, in sickness.
Which brings me to how lost I feel without a home to go back to, more so when the lows got too low. I would give anything to be home with you, both literally and metaphorically, on those low days so you could envelop me in one of your hugs that had a way of keeping the pain at bay for as long as your arms were around me. I needed a million hugs from you this year…
I also needed your guidance this year. One of the greatest blessings of my life is how, after I turned 25, we began to shift from a mother and daughter pair into true friends who enjoyed a friendship that deepened with each passing year. When I needed your counsel you always came through with great advice and I believe now that I am older (but not always wiser), you would have been even more open and honest with me if I came to you with everything I struggled with this year.
2025 has not been all doom and gloom though, because things began to get better not long after I turned 38. Even so, I desperately need 2026 to come correct because I cannot, and will not, live through a third December in a row of grieving the state of my life while also grieving you. So please speak to the keeper of the Universe and let her know I will do my part to make damn sure 2026 is my best year yet, but not ever! But she must also do her part to help me make all my wildest dreams come true next year.
I love you so soo sooo much and I miss you more than ever. Eight years down, a lifetime to go.
Love always,
Lwishh
Lwile the Leo 