I look at my life as distinctly having two parts.
'With' Mummy and 'After' Mummy.
My mother, Satinder Serna
I know it may be hard for some people to understand the logic behind these words but it really is so very simple.
I was a different person when my mother was alive and I feel like a completely different person after she has left us.
There is a hole in my heart which hasn't been filled two and a half months later. On the first day of 2018, today, while I've been involved in a wide range of other things, all I could do was think about how it would have been if I could see, touch and hear my lovely mother Satinder.
There are two parallel streams of thought running through my head at all times of the day- one, the real world where I have to participate in day to day activities and in many cases, initiate them.
The other, thoughts of my mother and everything she meant to me.
In a word, 'indescribable'.
Every day, I realise, more and more, how much she shaped so many different aspects of my life and along with that so many, many others, including my father and brother's.
So while my pain may take forever to go away, I'm going to try my best to turn it into my biggest strength.
I am now going to live my life more and more the way that my mother would have wanted me to. On a day to day basis, as well as on a longer term too.
I am going to be thankful for the fact that she was a part of my life till October 2017 and encouraged and enthused me to become the person that I am today.
Just 21 years older to me, my mother, Satinder, was a pillar of strength for all of us at different stages of our life. Most importantly, her strength and fortitude in dealing with her own ailments, particularly through 2017, will serve to remind us forever that true courage has many forms, but for for us, it was in the form of Mummy.
And so, I will strive to go through 2018 with my mother as my guiding star and my angel who watches above us from somewhere up above.
And if I fail, I will try, then try again and finally, try some more.
For that is exactly what Mummy would have wanted me to.