There are no words in the dictionary that can define the word mother. All I can say to describe you is friend, sister, babysitter, doctor, lawyer, comedian, spiritual director and so on.

I lost all of this three-and-a-half years ago. Maybe a lifetime to some but for me, it seems like yesterday. On a day like Mother’s Day I wish I could spend the whole day in bed, cover myself with a blanket and sleep hoping that your death was a nightmare and I would eventually wake up to hear you singing in the kitchen as you cooked our favourite dishes, the way you did when my sister and I were children and when dying was something that happened to other people and not to you, my darling mummy.

On Mother's Day, I keep hearing those “mummy” songs on the radio wishing that somehow you were only in the next room and when I would call out that magical word “mum” you would somehow appear and ask what in that lovely gay voice of yours.

O how I miss you mum! So true the proverb that when somebody you love dies, a large part of you dies with them! How foolish of some people to spend days, weeks, months and even years not speaking to their mother over a simple argument!

How heartless to have a mother placed in an old folks home and not even bother to visit her once in a while! How merciless some people are, not really minding if their mother died, as if she were heartburn and a bother and irritation!

Why, sister and I could give up both our wordly possessions to have you back again, something as impossible as having a three-year-old baby a member of Parliament!

Memories of you are never far away especially when I hear the songs Imagine by John Lennon or The Wind Beneath my Wings sung by Bette Midler. To me, you were exactly that, the wind beneath my wings. With you gone I feel like Samson with his hair shaved off, weak, vulnerable and as timid as a baby lamb.

Dearest mummy, I don’t know if “Mother's Day” is celebrated in heaven but if it is, here’s hoping you have a wonderful day from your daughters Valerie and Sonya.

Not gone from your two daughter’s memory.

Not gone from your two daughter’s heart.

But gone to be with Jesus, in His bright home above.

Valerie Borg

Valletta