don’t go where i can’t follow

i still call out, “yumma,” every time i walk into the house. sometimes i don’t even know if she’s home. sometimes it’s just habit. but hearing her faint reply, from somewhere deep inside the walls, reminds me that i’m home, whether the day was good, or bad, or somewhere in between.

growing up, she was always the one documenting our lives. birthdays, first days of school, travels, long afternoons with nothing special to celebrate, all of it ended up in photo albums stacked around the house. but never her. there are no albums that tell her story. no pictures that show the years passing through her hands.

i didn’t notice it at first, the way time began to touch her. the slight stutter in her hands while preparing meals. the way the groceries seemed heavier on her wrists. the careful climb up the stairs. the squint in her eyes as she watched television. the “i didn’t hear you,” when you spoke too softly. the mornings she spent alone with her tea, tending to her garden.

for 15 years, i wondered if she ever felt sad, angry or lonely after my father passed. if she thought about leaving when cancer came back the second time. i never asked. i learned to live with not knowing. some things sit between people in ways that don’t need words.

what i do know is that fatema won’t live forever. she lived her life with pride, with patience, with the kind of love that never asked for anything back, not as the first-born of eight siblings, not as the mother who had to be both parents for me and my brother. we owe her everything, and no matter what we do, it’s a debt that can never truly be repaid.

so i will try in the only ways i know how. i will tell her stories. i will be a good son. a loving husband. one day, a better father. and maybe, if i am lucky, she will still be here to see it.

until then, i’ll keep saving these pieces of her, i’ll keep collecting her in frames, until the day she can finally, have herself that photo album.