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Illustration by Catherine Chan
My earliest memory is of my mother leaving me. I was four years old. I stood at the top of the staircase in our townhouse as she carried my infant brother out the door to the parking garage. In my little mind, she was never to return. Of course, she returned but only after what felt like an eternity. This pattern played out repeatedly in my family, right through to my adulthood: Something upset her, she threatened to leave, we’d work hard to make it better and then things were okay. Until the next time. My father, brother and I were bonded by both this great fear of losing my mother’s love, and the continuing fatigue of navigating this emotional minefield, never sure what would set her off.
When things were good, they were really good. She was loving, caring, fiercely protective and quite fun. When things were bad, they were really bad. She was combative and mean. I couldn’t wait to leave home to go to university.
When I was 22, my brother died suddenly in a car accident. We were shattered and dealt with his death differently: My father dove deeply into his work, I leaned into my friends and my mother’s mental health got worse. She was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and narcissistic personality disorder, which explained a lot.
As the years went on, my mother and I settled into a tense but tolerable relationship, with my father playing mediator. In 2021, my father suffered a fatal heart attack. By this time, I had a marriage, two kids and a demanding career. I had never been so angry at the universe for taking away my easy parent and leaving me to manage my mother on my own.
What happened next surprised me. As my mother and I were united in this second major loss in our family, we coped together. At the same time, I slowly realized that she was a person, independent of me as her child, with a complex existence and story. This shaped not just who she was but how she was.
Mom grew up in a wealthy family in India. She did whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted and with seemingly endless resources. When she was 18, my grandparents arranged her marriage with a man nine years her senior, “for her own good,” and sent her to Canada where her new husband had a promising career as a scientist. The isolation, the jarring change in climate, the everyday racism and the challenges of raising children in a different culture … all of this must have been so overwhelming. Against the backdrop of her mental-health challenges, it must have terrified her, too.
I have felt a lot of things about my mother but during these past few years, I have let go of my anger and hurt, and felt empathy. True empathy for the child she was when she came to Canada with a person she met just two weeks earlier; empathy for the young mother who struggled (like any parent) with babies and toddlers and then school-aged children with their own challenges; empathy for the woman who lost her teenage son and then her husband, whom she grew to love over 51 years of marriage. My mother became gentler and kinder after my father’s death.
Last April, she called to tell me she had found a lump. By July, we knew it was terminal and she decided to let nature take its course (and nature, by the way, can be very cruel). By August she had lost 40 pounds and was plagued by blinding headaches and exhaustion. By September, she decided to pursue MAID. By October, she was gone.
During her last weeks, I sent my mother a text every day to share something that she had done or said over the years that I valued or loved. As I did this, I realized that while we had always had a fraught relationship, there were so many times that she went to bat for me, showed me how much she loved me or gave me advice that I continue to draw on today. I told her how sorry I was for all the years we had been distant, and she said she didn’t think about any of that – that she was only focused on how strong our relationship was today. She told me that she knew she had made mistakes, but they were never out of a lack of love. She told me how proud she was of the life and family I had made. She told me that she knew I’d be fine without her.
On the day she died, my mother’s apartment was filled with people who came to wish her well. She talked and laughed with us all, right to the end. I felt my mother leave her body in my arms that evening. I was relieved that my mother was out of pain – both from the cancer and the pain that came from all the losses in her life. And I was grateful to be left with no fear and no resentment, just love.
Purnima Sundar lives in Ottawa.