Before you go (3)

PART 3: When life stops negotiating with us

Right now, I'm sitting with my Mother's Day jewelry ideas. It feels tough. We have now received the definitive news that this will be my mother's last Mother's Day. After several days at my parents' house and attempts to survive the state of shock alone at home, I not only feel constantly nauseous but also heavy-hearted — hanging by a thin thread, torn from the everyday hum of life, sitting in a bubble with the predominant impression of being underwater in a deep lake, unable to see more than a few centimeters in any direction my gaze takes me.

It hurts everywhere.

All need to understand who was right and who was wrong — it suddenly feels so small. So strangely distant. Something else remains. Something much more bare.

Grief.

It almost scares me how quickly everything else disappeared. How the heart suddenly stopped clinging to old narratives when reality became so fragile. As if life itself peeled away one layer at a time, leaving behind what had always been there underneath — hidden by time, by arguments, by years.

Love.

I think of everything I've felt. Emotions that felt so true. Accusations that felt so justified.

But perhaps that's the human element of it. Close relationships rarely carry "just" love. They carry an entire life — longing and disappointment, fear and old wounds, dependencies and misunderstandings, and everything that was never quite fully said. Mothers and daughters carry something particularly heavy of this. Decades of feelings colliding, a relationship that begins before we can even remember and that shapes us in ways we may never fully understand.

It's not a sign that the love was false. It's a sign that the relationship was real.

And yet.

Now the doctors have said what they said. The news that changes everything. It feels as if a part of me has known for a long time — that the body understands the truth before the mind catches up. Now I know approximately how much time is left. And something in me has entered another room.

It's strange how death changes the perspective on everything. It no longer asks who was right. Who said, did, thought what, when, in what way. It only leaves behind the most painful and most true sentence of all:

Mom, I so want you to stay - but I don't want you to suffer.

What should I do? Where should I go?

There's no answer to that question. It's impossible precisely because it's so full of love. To want to keep her. And to want her to be spared suffering. Both things are true at the same time. It's not a contradiction — it's what it means to truly love someone.

And then there's something else. Something I don't quite have words for. A speechlessness amidst it all.

How do you describe what happens when you see your mother disappear — and at the same time, precisely at the same time, see her become more herself than she perhaps ever dared to be?

She smiles more now. Even laughs. As if some kind of insecurity has left her. As if the fear of letting herself be loved simply subsided. She lets me get close now in a way she didn't before. Accepts without protecting herself.

It hurts in a way I didn't know existed. Because it's so beautiful. And it comes so late.

Why didn't we have this earlier? Why did life have to take everything from us for us to find each other in this way?

I don't know. Is that really the human element of it? That we rarely open ourselves up completely until we can no longer afford to remain closed?

But, we have it now. It's real. And it's ours.

I don't understand exactly how it happened — how we got to this point. Perhaps the grief did it?

This naked, existential grief that can strip away layer after layer until the heart stands there without armor. And then one can almost be shocked by how much love actually existed beneath everything else. All along. Hidden by life, by stress, by everything unsaid.

Time rushes and stands still at the same time now. Every moment is heavier. More precious.

I don't need to become a perfect child in retrospect. And she doesn't need to become the mother I sometimes missed.

But there is still something forward.

A hand. A glance. A touch. Sitting next to each other without anything needing to be said. Small sentences. Old memories appearing out of nowhere. Presence. Just presence.

That's what we humans can carry with us long afterwards.

So, that's where I am now. In a room where everything else has fallen silent. Just love. Just be her daughter while I still can.

It is often what remains when life stops negotiating with us. Not pride. Not analysis. Not old formulations branded into us long ago.

Just:

I love you.

And - can you stay a little longer?