Mother’s Day has come around once more and, like last year, I feel my heart literally bleeding with pain. It grieves me more than I can say to know that you are no longer with us. One year and nearly five months have gone by but is seems like yesterday that you left us.

If only you knew how much it saddens me to note the Mother’s Day cards in shops, how tears gather in my eyes whenever I hear people asking what they should buy for their mother. I wish this feast never came to happen but this is being selfish, isn’t it?

I looked upon it in such a special way when you were alive that it is egoistic of me to contemplate it not being commemorated just because you are no longer by my side.

I miss you so much. I never knew what envy was all about until I lost you. Now I find myself feeling as if I am being harpooned through the heart when someone calls out “Mum”. Do not misunderstand me Mum, it is not bitterness I feel; just an overwhelming sensation of complete and utter desolation and, to tell you the truth, I do not understand how I am going on with life without you. As soon as you died, I felt as if I had fallen in the pit of black abyss with no chance of experiencing light anymore. You were my joy, my comfort, my stronghold, my refuge, and my rock. Mum, you meant the world to me. Sometimes I feel that I want you so much that I feel frantic.

I want to hold you and kiss you so much. Most of the time I keep a rosary bead in my pocket and when wanting you so much is so unbearable, I clutch it as though I am actually holding your hand. Nothing and no one can ever put into words the extent and depth of the horrific sense of loss that has engulfed me the minute you went out of my life.

Even after one year and nearly five months, Mum, the pain is so intense that it is almost physical. I function normally as every human being. I go out, I wear nice modern clothes, I smile, I even double over with laughter sometimes but…

A very important part of me died with you on 16 December 2005 and since that day, there has never been a single hour in which I have not thought about you. I get so mad sometimes when I hear about mums and daughters who grew apart. It is true that mothers are not infallible, but I wish their daughters would realise how lucky they are just to have a mother.

Nobody loves you like a mother; not a son, not a daughter, not a friend, not even a husband. Of course, not everybody had the kind of relationship you and I had. We laughed about the same things, we cried together, we opened up to each other and most of all, it was you who taught me not to make mountains out of molehills.

It was you who taught me to accept myself as I am; it was you who taught me to acknowledge my limitations, it was you who taught me that in life, we have to accept what comes our way with a calm perseverance.

That is why I guess I have come to accept the fact that you do not belong to me now, but to God.

I just wish that if any reader is reading what I have written today and is not on speaking terms with their mother, this will pull at their heartstrings and they will decide to make up. Mum, they say that the dead know what is happening to those they loved and left behind, and I believe this completely. You and I were so close that even the cold hand of death would never keep us truly apart.

If you should happen to read this Mum I want you to know how very, very, very much I love you and always will. How very, very much I appreciated what you did for me when I found myself a penniless widow at the age of 35 years, with two children aged eight and 11 years. I want you to know Mum, that every night when I close my eyes, my last thoughts are of you opening your arms to welcome me. Thank you for being my mother. I will always treasure your unique memory till the time comes for me to celebrate Mother’s Day with you in heaven. Mum, what you had was not just physical beauty, because that kind of beauty is like of the rose which fades on the morrow.

What you had is that inner beauty of the spirit, which I am sure has led you straight to heaven. God Bless my darling, until we meet again. I dedicate this to the mum I love and to all those who are living their lives without their mother.

Valerie Borg

MLP councillor

Valletta