The authorities of her daughter’s school reportedly encouraged her to put down in words her memories of the doughty single mother who wouldn’t give up. The 553-word piece went viral on social media after a website posted it on Monday morning. The 17-year-old remembered her mother as one who had her bad days, never completed her education, who’d drink, smoke, had 21 tattoos and a whole lot of scars from mutilation and would sometimes get into her daughter’s clothes too. She never had a permanent job but at the same time was “a rebel… incontestably stubborn and unbelievably broad-minded… who learned from her mistakes, even though she made one too many of them.”
She said her mother taught the two sisters to live for the small moments — “moments like our first kiss, the adrenaline rush during a thrilling moment” — and asked them to work hard just to be able enough to fight in this world. “Sure my mother taught me things the hard way, but at least now I know that even when I’m all alone and have nothing, I will always have myself, the one that I’m true to and at peace with, the part of me that won’t make me feel so at a distance from myself,” wrote the 17-year-old.
To the survivor, her daughters were everything she had. “I have been a single mother for the past 12 yrs and with the help of my mother who lives with me I have brought up my beautiful girls who have been one of my biggest reasons to fight against the crime that has left me scarred for my whole life,” she had written earlier. Her daughter’s obituary generated a wide range of reactions, with many women saying they wish their daughters remember them the same way when they are dead.
The 17-year-old described her mother as a simple and real person. “She believed in being real, like the beauty of waking up at noon and looking ugly from the smeared makeup, she believed in the twinkle of someone’s eyes and the glow on their faces, when they spoke of something they loved, the truth, like a visitor at our place and their reaction to an untidy house and an unmade bed, or a sudden skip of a heart beat when the favourite character in a movie died.”
{{/usCountry}}The 17-year-old described her mother as a simple and real person. “She believed in being real, like the beauty of waking up at noon and looking ugly from the smeared makeup, she believed in the twinkle of someone’s eyes and the glow on their faces, when they spoke of something they loved, the truth, like a visitor at our place and their reaction to an untidy house and an unmade bed, or a sudden skip of a heart beat when the favourite character in a movie died.”
{{/usCountry}}“There have been days when we had not a rupee at home to eat. ‘It’s okay’, she’d smile reassuringly, ‘at least we have each other’,” her daughter wrote, describing her mother as the only inspiration in her life.