I was so glad that my mother didn’t give up.

I was so glad that my mother didn’t give up. The past is immutable. It is always there. We carry it around with us. Some people refer to it as a baggage. The past is the sum total of one’s self. It has made me who I am. Sitting here, alone, in the graveyard always gave me inner peace. I put down the large bouquet of tulips on the grave and stared at the old head stone. The color of the letters had faded away with time and it was impossible to read. But for me, it was as if these very words had been carved in my heart. “ JULIA ANDREWS. 22ND MARCH 1958- 4TH DECEMBER 2001. MAY YOU REST IN ETERNAL PEACE” As I slid my fingers over these letters, I felt the warmth of my tears on my cold cheeks. I let them fall. I drifted down time. “ they’ll be bringing down your father tomorrow. Then there is going to be a ceremony tomorrow evening. And baby, don’t cry, you know your father won’t like it. ” With this my mother gave me a tight hug. I was just fourteen, when my father, an army soldier, had died. He was coming from work, when he’d lost his life in a road accident. Now, it was just my mother and me. Things changed. We were in a financial crisis. My father had been the bread earner of my family. I changed. I didn’t want to go to school anymore. I just wanted to hide away from this world, be invisible. My father’s death had left me shattered and empty. “ Mom, I do not want to go to this carnival. ” I shouted at my mother. Several months had passed by my father’s death. “ No Jane, you’ll have to go. You know that your father would not have liked it. ” “ No mother, I don’t know. Dad’s dead, isn’t he? It doesn’t matter if he agreed to a thing or not. ” But after all my futile efforts my mother forced me to go to the school carnival as she believed that social interaction was good for me. Most of my teenage years went by like this. I settling at one thing and my mother defying it every time. I did not realize that all that she had been doing for me was for my betterment, out of her sheer love for me, till that cold November day of 1996. “ Mom I am home. ” I announced my arrival. I made my way to the kitchen where I usually found my mother at this hour. There, by the left open refrigerator door lay my mother. Trembling. By her side were pieced of a bowl which had fallen from her hands. I didn’t know what to do. I called the hospital. My mother was diagnosed for epilepsy. The doctor informed me that it would be fairly common for me to see my mother become unconscious. “ Medicines will help but not a great extent. We will try our best. But you know it is already too late. She doesn’t have much time. ” Dr. Richards said. This news shocked me and I believed that my mother would have broken down too. Yet when I saw her, there was no difference. There in front of me sat my mother the way I had always remembered her, though a little weaker and paler. She wanted to go back home. She urged me to go return to college and complete my Bachelors in Architecture. She wanted me to go on and I did. The doctor continued with their medication at our home. At times the process was painful for her but she still looked at me with a smile on her face. At times I would find her silently crying at night. This was my mother, who inaudibly bore her sufferings and despite the fact that she herself had so many problems, she was always there for mine. I became an architect. My mother became an epileptic. I was so glad that my mother didn’t give up. Neither on herself or on me. Until that gray December day when she surrendered. The muffled snow fall jolted me out of my reverie. I know that its time to leave. As I walked towards the gate I glanced at that faded stone grave of the person who made me who I am, my mother.