The Learning Teacher

My mother died peacefully in her sleep on Tuesday late evening, just before midnight after a long illness. The reality of her death has not quite sink in yet. But her illness and the eventual loss of our mother had been in my thoughts for many years.I found writing about my mother one way of coming to terms with my mum and below are two poems I feel ready at this stage to share.

My Beautiful Butterfly

Lying on my mother’s bed

I’d watch her

begin her Sunday ritual.

She’d open her cupboard

and there before her lay

shelves of neatly arranged sarees.

A splendid array of colours.

All calling out to be worn.

I never knew how she chose.

I’d put a word for my choice.

She’d smile and pay no heed.

Freshly bathed

With quaint modesty

She’d rush into her bedroom.

Now with immaculate precision

she’d drape her body

with yards of cloth.

Within minutes she’d emerge -

a beautiful butterfly!

I would stare in wonder

at the tall fair lovely woman -

my mother.

Then my young adult decisions

tore me away from her …

I never returned to my mother’s bedroom again -

A childhood privy

gone forever.

Every Sunday without fail

my mother had gone to church

(and would continue even in a wheelchair).

She no longer wears sarees

An Indonesian maid dresses her

in cotton kaftans

It’s all very practical now.

My mother’s sarees sit quietly on the shelves of her cupboard.

Are they still calling out to be worn?

I know the next time I see her in a saree

she will not be that tall lovely lady -

my beautiful butterfly.

She would lay small and shriveled

in her final bed.

Malachi Edwin Vethamani

November 2007

Loss

As I land at Sultan Ahmad Shah Airport

I think to myself:

It’s such a kudisai.

Kudisai kudisai kudisai

The words ring in my ears.

The last time I heard it

was probably on my mother’s lips.

These days the only words we hear

are those she repeats after my sister.

We once lived in what some would have called a kudisai

My fondest of childhood memories are there at that kudisai

My fiercest of nightmares, I reckon, are there at that kudisai too.

Kudisai kudisai kudisai

I have not heard that word for years

but it returned today.

Why did it return to me today?

Some foreboding of hearing my mother speak again?

An answer to my brother’s fervent prayers?

Kudisai kudisai kudisai

As I get into a taxi

I think to myself:

Lost is the kudisai we once called home.

Lost is our mother we lovingly call Amma.

Malachi Edwin Vethamani

5 May 2007

 

Kudisai is a Tamil word for shack or small house

A word of thanks to all of you for your words of comfort, flowers, coming to our home and for attending the funeral service and burial.