This is a story dedicated to the project “My Dear Friend,” in support of women with cancer.

At that very moment, right there, when in the morning phone call my father told me that my mother was gone, I felt lost. Everything collapsed in one second, this broken feeling dominated by insecurity. It is difficult to describe, I felt abandoned, as if I no longer had a home. Confusion, vulnerability, weakness, inevitability and fear, overwhelming fear.

As strange as it sounded to me, there was no doubt in my mind that I was prepared to lose her… We often talked about this day, she asked me to write down what I should do that day and how I should live with it after. But I could not even imagine that I could feel that the strength and protection I felt on some mental level could vanish in an instant and absolutely irrevocably.

Days, weeks, months, years have passed since the day she stopped praying for me and left me. Does time heal? No. Time teaches me to control my emotions, but does not heal me. But all these terrible feelings of pain, gradually and slowly fills with love. Mine to her and hers to me… And I realized that I should not be afraid. I realized that “love will come and when love comes, love will hold you.”

love will come
and when love comes
love will hold you
love will call your name
and you will melt
sometimes though
love will hurt you but
love will never mean to
love will play no games
cause love knows life
has been hard enough already


- rupi kaur