Farewell my mother
Farewell my mother
This piece originated in May 2012, in the immediate aftermath of my mother’s passing, and was subsequently revised in 2026 with the aid of generative AI.
She slipped away on a Sunday morning — the 29th of April, 2012 — while the world outside her window in Dalugama continued its unhurried Sri Lankan rhythm. Mary Susan Jayawardane, my mother, was seventy-eight years old. She didn’t struggle. She just stopped breathing in her sleep, as if she was tired of the effort of living, and let go.
Her three children were scattered like seeds across the globe. I was in Sydney, under the vast Australian sky. My brother was in Winnipeg, buried in Canadian snow. Only my sister, who lives close to the old family home, had the grace of being nearby. She visited that morning, as she always did, never knowing it would be her last.
Death has a cruel talent for subtraction. I did the math on my mother — the total number of years I actually lived under her roof. Sixteen. That was the sum. At twenty-one — she was forty-two then — I stepped onto a plane bound for Dubai, leaving both my parents behind. But even before that, from twelve to sixteen, I was gone — confined to a novitiate, a boarding school for boys who dreamed of becoming Christian brothers. So if you strip away those four years, I’m left with just twelve years of her steady, everyday presence. And if you subtract the blur of infancy and toddlerhood, the number shrinks further — to maybe eight solid years of knowing her, really knowing her, in all the ways that count.
Eight years.
Yet somehow, that small window contained a whole universe.
I remember our house as a sanctuary that never turned anyone away. My mother’s heart was a door with no lock. She took in my father’s mother. She sheltered her own elder brother, her younger sister, her ageing maternal aunt and her husband. And then there was my grandmother — my mother’s own mother — who came to us in fragments from a mental asylum, her mind a broken kaleidoscope. At one point, three grandmothers and a grand-uncle lived under our roof. It should have been chaos. It should have been exhausting.
But kids see things differently. To me, our home was an orchestra of voices, a tapestry of stories, a museum of our heritage. The chatter never stopped. The pride never faded. And somewhere in that beautiful noise, I found the thread that would lead me to my destiny.
My mother was a painting no artist could capture. Tall and fair, with hair that fell to her knees when she let it down — black as monsoon clouds, thick as jungle vines. She never wore makeup. She didn’t need to. Her hair was always tied with an elegance that seemed effortless, though I know now it wasn’t. As a kid, I couldn’t understand why strangers on the street would turn to stare at her, their eyes following her like she was a passing dream.
I remember my first pay packet. I was eighteen, and I spent nearly three-quarters of it on a saree for her. The fabric shimmered in colours I can no longer recall, but I remember her face when she unwrapped it. She kept that saree until her last breath. It was in her cupboard when she died.
Between eighteen and twenty-one, our relationship frayed at the edges. I was restless, too outgoing for her liking. I spent too much time out and about. I dreamed of leaving Sri Lanka, of seeing the world beyond our little island. I didn’t know then that fate was already writing my ticket.
The chance to go to Dubai came out of the blue — unexpected, urgent. I had ten days to pack my life and leave. Ten days to tell my parents I was going. Looking back, I must have shocked them. In those days, going overseas wasn’t like taking a bus to the next suburb. There were no WhatsApp calls, no emails, no cheap flights home. The world was bigger then, the distances more absolute.
Neither of them tried to stop me.
The night before my flight, my mother came to my bedside. I can still feel the weight of her hand on my head, the tremor in her fingers as she traced memories into my scalp. She spoke of my childhood in fragments — the boy I was, the man I was becoming. She wept. Her tears fell on my face like rain, and I lay there, pretending to sleep, my heart cracking under the weight of her sorrow.
I made a promise to myself that night. No more carrying on. No more causing her pain. From that moment on, I would give her only joy.
I left. I grew up quick in Dubai, learning to stand on my own two feet. I built a career in international banking, specialising in technology. I sent money home, made sure my parents had everything they needed. My sister got married. My brother graduated. I got married and had four kids. Eventually, I left Dubai for Australia — one of the best first-world countries, they said. My brother found his way to Canada. My sister stayed in Sri Lanka, planted like a tree in our family soil.
I came back home only for holidays — first as a young man, then as a husband with kids in tow, and finally as a grown man, coming back to care for the ones who once cared for me.
In 2002, my father died suddenly. My mother, after a short spell of grieving, picked herself up like a woman who had no time for sadness. She took charge of the properties, the rentals, the finances — everything my father had managed. She was a widow for nearly ten years, but she never acted like one. She was fierce. Independent. She refused live-in help, preferring to rely on university students who rented our second house, on neighbours, on gardeners, on anyone but herself to admit she needed looking after.
She was determined to live on her own terms.
In her later years, my sister became her anchor, visiting regularly. My mother had her routines — church on Sundays, brief chats with neighbours, a network of relatives from both sides of the family. She never distinguished between the wealthy and the poor, the educated and the simple. She treated everyone the same, just as my father had taught us.
At her funeral, the pews were filled with people from every walk of life — relatives, neighbours, friends. And there, at the back, sat the down-and-out — the ones she’d quietly helped through her charity work. They’d come to say goodbye to the woman who’d treated them like family.
I never spent enough time with her. That’s the truth I carry with me. But I hope she knew — I hope she knows — that every step I took, every success I achieved, every kilometre I travelled, was somehow for her. She gave me roots, and she gave me wings. She taught me that home isn’t a place, it’s a feeling. And I carry that feeling with me, always.
Goodbye, Amma. Thanks for the saree you cherished, the tears you shed, the love you poured in. Thanks for teaching me that strength comes in many forms — and that sometimes, the strongest people are the ones who weep in the dark.
You’re free now. And I’m still learning how to let you go.
This piece originated in May 2012, in the immediate aftermath of my mother’s passing, and was subsequently revised in 2026 with the aid of generative AI.
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