It happened in a supermarket.
I walked in with a list in my hand and nothing particular on my mind. And then I stopped. Right there, near the entrance, was an entire display of Mother’s Day cards. Balloons. Flowers wrapped in cellophane. Mugs with Best Mum written on them in cheerful fonts. The kind of display that on any other year, in any other life, I would have walked straight towards.
Instead, I just stood there. And it hit me. Not gradually, not gently. All at once. The biggest hole I have ever felt. Right in the centre of my chest. The kind of absence that doesn’t have edges, that you can’t see the shape of until something like this forces you to look directly at it.
I cried. Right there. In front of the cards and the balloons and the flowers.
And then I did something I have done every year since. I picked up a card. I read it slowly. I chose the one that felt most like her. And I bought it.
Because wherever she is, she will always have my love. Mother’s Day doesn’t stop just because she’s no longer physically here to receive it. If anything, it means more now. It’s my quiet insistence that she is still my Mum. That nothing — not distance, not time, not even death — changes that.
That’s grief. It doesn’t knock. It doesn’t wait for a convenient moment. It just arrives. In the middle of a meeting, whilst you are driving, in the opening bars of a song, in the flash of a memory you didn’t know you were carrying. It catches you completely off guard, and then it looks at you as if to say, what did you expect?
My Mum passed away in April 2020. At the height of Covid. She was silently strong, extraordinarily kind, and she loved her children with a fierceness that never needed to announce itself. I am the eldest of three. And six years on, I am still learning what it means to live in a world she is no longer physically in.
This is what I wish someone had told me.
She died alone. And I have had to make peace with that.
When the phone call came, I wasn’t there.
None of us were. Covid had made sure of that. My Mum took her last breath in an isolated room. No hands held, no words whispered, no forehead kissed. We couldn’t perform our religious duties. The funeral was held online. My Dad, my siblings, my Uncle, sat together in a room while the rest watched through a screen. The world was in crisis and somehow, in the middle of all of it, we were also supposed to grieve.
The guilt of that absence sat with me for a long time. We were always around each other. That’s just who we were as a family. And the thought of her leaving without one of us beside her, without feeling the warmth of someone who loved her, is something I have had to consciously, repeatedly, gently, lay down.
What I know now is this: love doesn’t require presence to be felt. She knew. She always knew.
Grief doesn’t go away. And it was never supposed to.
Here is the thing nobody tells you. Or perhaps they do, and you simply cannot hear it until you’re living it. You do not get over grief. You don’t move past it. You don’t reach a finish line where you collect your certificate and rejoin the world as your former self.
Grief moves in with you. It rearranges the furniture. Some days it’s quiet and you almost forget it’s there. Other days it’s sitting right in the middle of the room, taking up all the space, refusing to be ignored.
And here’s what I’ve come to understand about that. It’s not something to fix. Every time grief surfaces — in the supermarket, in a meeting, in the middle of a perfectly ordinary Tuesday — it’s not a sign that something is wrong with me. It’s love. It’s love with nowhere to go. Every tear, every memory, every involuntary smile when something reminds me of her. That’s not sadness. That’s her. That’s us. Still.
So I stopped trying to get over it. And I started letting it be what it actually is.
The moments she missed. That’s a particular kind of ache.
There’s the grief of losing someone. And then there’s the quieter, stranger grief of watching life continue without them.
My cousin got married. My niece was born. We got our first dog — this ridiculous, wonderful creature who my Mum would have absolutely adored and definitely spoiled. And through all of it, threading through the joy like a fine, bittersweet ribbon, is the thought: she would have loved this. She should be here for this.
Even when Trump was re-elected, my first instinct was to call her. And then the second thought, following close behind, was: actually, Mum, you’ve been spared this one.
She would have laughed at that. I laughed for both of us.
That’s the thing about grief over time. It doesn’t only live in sadness. It lives in joy too. In every milestone and celebration and ridiculous news headline, she is somehow present in her absence. I’ve stopped seeing that as painful. I see it now as her still being woven into the fabric of my life.
What helped. And what didn’t.
People mean well. I want to say that before I say anything else. The people who reached out, who sent messages, who showed up — they were doing their best in an impossible situation.
But if I never hear the phrase she’s in a better place again, I will consider that a gift.
I understand the intention behind it. I do. But in the rawness of fresh grief, all I could think was: the better place is here. With me. At the dinner table. On the end of the phone. In the kitchen making chai. The better place is next to the people who love her.
What actually helped? A plate of food left on the doorstep. Flowers with a simple note. A friend who sat with me and didn’t try to fill the silence with words. Just presence. Just being there. Covid stole the hugs and I felt that loss within a loss more than I can properly articulate. There is something about being physically held by someone who loves you that no Zoom call can replicate.
If you are ever trying to support someone in grief and you don’t know what to say, that’s fine. You don’t need to say anything. Show up. Bring food. Hold the space. Silence offered with love is one of the most profound gifts one human being can give another.
What she left inside me.
My Mum was once described to me as silently strong. That phrase has stayed with me. Because it’s exactly right. She didn’t need to be loud about her love or her strength. She just was those things. Consistently, quietly, completely.
And I’ve come to realise — she left that in me.
Not as an inheritance I had to claim, but as something she planted so early and so deeply that it simply is part of who I am. Her kindness lives in the way I move through the world. Her acceptance of me — all of me — lives in the work I do helping others feel that they belong. Every time I hold space for someone who feels unseen, I am, in some quiet way, continuing her.
Grief cracked me open. And what grew in that space was a deeper understanding that every single person I encounter is carrying something I know nothing about. That beneath every surface is a story. That the most powerful thing we can offer each other is not advice, or solutions, or reassurance, but simply the willingness to be present. To see someone. To let them know they are not alone.
My Mum taught me that without ever needing to explain it. She just lived it.
To you, reading this.
Maybe you’re in the early days of loss. Maybe you’re years in and you still cried somewhere unexpected this week and felt embarrassed about it. Maybe you’re somewhere in between, navigating a grief that the world thinks you should be over by now.
I want you to know: you are not behind. There is no timeline. There is no correct way to do this.
And those tears that catch you off guard — in the supermarket, in the middle of meetings, whilst you’re driving, when a song comes on that you weren’t ready for — that’s not weakness. That’s not you failing to cope. That is love, still alive in you, still looking for its person.
You are carrying something sacred.
And you are not carrying it alone.
In loving memory of my Mum — Sumitra. August 1946 to April 2020.
The better place was always here.
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