My Grief-titude

What I Learned About Myself After My Mother’s Death

Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.

Napoleon Hill

The year 2014 was nearing its end, and so was the life of the woman who gave birth to me.

It was a cold drizzly morning of 17th of December, when I lost my mother to a multitude of escalating health issues. She was 76 when she breathed her last and quietly slipped away into another realm as we, her five girls, stood beside her hospital bed. That wet morning as we watched her breathing becoming shallower and farther and farther apart, each one of us was gripped with their own version of fear and sorrow in the presence of death too close, too present and too final.

During the last six months of her life my mother had displayed all the classic signs of mental and physical withdrawal, preparing us for her impending departure from earthly abode. I and my sisters knew what was coming. We are a close knit family and have always been there for each other — and this time we took a little comfort in the thought that we were in this together — that this loss of our mum was a shared sorrow. But even with the best support system, nothing really prepares you for the loss of a loved one; especially if that loved one is also…