What is life without conflict?
Not one person can honestly say that they have no conflicts with the one they love…
Me and my amma, we always fought!
Me resisting her always, and she always looking out for me
Even when I was at my worst, she loved me and accepted me
Even I was a raging mess, she tolerated me and never kicked me out
She kept my secrets all her life
Took all my pain, and hid it deep within her
She knew that my actions did not define me as a person
And made sure I knew that too, in her own special way
That’s just how it was for us and that’s exactly how we liked it.

Now that my amma is no more,
There have been many days that I’ve wished that I’d done things differently
Listened to her more
Not fought back as much as I did
Been a little less of a brat
Picked fewer fights
Helped her more, and so on
But then I think, if I had done all this would she still mean the same to me, or more?

We spend so much of our time focused on the “What ifs?”
Why can’t we instead focus on the good memories?
When we do that, we’ll realise that we have so many good memories to fall back on

Memories that make you remember how your amma was always the best, even when she didn’t let you have curd rice for dinner 🙂

Memories like waking up in the middle of the night, and going to sleep next to her and appa because you’ve wet your bed

Waking up to the smell of hot food every morning and running straight into the kitchen from bed to see what’s cooking for lunch
Followed by amma asking me to brush my teeth before rushing out like that

Sometimes annoying weekends when amma would make us help her clean the house to get it ready for Diwali followed by the happiness of awesome veg kurma or macaroni and sometimes even cake to reward us for helping her

Amma calling my mobile from the next room in a 2 bedroom apartment, asking me to come and press her back or sometimes to just come and switch off the light once she’s done reading

Getting ready for work and speaking to amma all the way to work, even when there is nothing to speak

Sending pictures of dishes I cooked all by myself while staying alone, and calling her to see what she thought of the dish based on how it looked in a photo

All these memories, some good, some bad, defined our relation
Even though there is not one day that goes by without me missing her and wanting her back
I know that my memories with her will always stay with me
and I will not look back anymore with regrets of how I could have done this and that differently
Because what we had was great, and what we had made us closer in our own way!