My mother: Held my hand for years, and will hold my heart forever

On mother’s day in Sudan, and as it’s celebrated elsewhere, Suzanne Sharief takes a moment to admire, immortalize and perpetuate mothers all around the world. 

“Nubian Family” by Suzy Hart

I have a terrible memory. Yet, I still recall the night twelve years ago, when I forgot her – or so I thought. I sobbed and wept for what seemed like forever. It had been five nights that day since my mother was gone, and as a part of my daily ritual I started to fantasize about conversations I wish to have with her. It is usually about the girl at school who looked at me differently, or how I will one day save the world, or occasionally about the reasons why I thought I was a crazy child.

But then I couldn’t remember her face, I tried to force her image into my head but failed. I tried not to panic, I looked at my sleeping sisters’ face desperately hoping that it might bring that holly face I missed so much, but it didn’t. It frustrated me that nobody looked like her, but now I know that nobody ever looks like one’s mother.

She came back the next morning with tens of gifts, toys and candy, and the greatest gift of all was her face. Years later I understood that my mother never really left us home, even when she physically did. Perhaps my mind and heart were with her that day, perhaps I saw what she wanted me to see, perhaps that very day she just missed my face more than she missed my imaginary conversations and decided to just hold me close and the darkness I saw when I tried to visualize her face was actually her loving embrace. All I know is that, whatever that was, is, and will ever be between a mother and a child, is always love. Pain is love, forcing you to do things you don’t understand, making you angry, forcing you to feel little, feeding you broccoli, and perhaps whipping your ass, is love. I believe that I DO have the greatest mother in the world, and when I hear people say that I grin and think, oh how foolish, if only they knew.

They say you never know a good thing until you lose it. I say you know good things all along; you’re just mostly immature, proud, and vain and you don’t acknowledge and express gratitude. Be humble enough to tell your mother that she is the biggest and perhaps the only miracle in your life. Mothers are the reason. And having a mother is the closest anyone could ever have to an angel. Humanity at its purest forms is naturally crystallized in those God chose to be the vessels to make and bring life on earth. Words about mothers often seem flat and empty, because the truth is, you cannot verbalize magic. A mother will love through the hurt, through the weakness and the failure, and it’s humiliating to say thank you to something so grand, but by all means, say it, and prove it anyway. And make sure that of the very few pictures worth carving into your heart, is of your mother’s face.