Mum, losing you was not just losing a mother

it was losing my direction, my safe harbour

my emotional home, you were the place I

returned to, over and over, no matter how far

I wandered, without you, I feel like I have been

dropped into a remote island, with no compass

no map, no sense of which way leads forward

The world made sense because you were in it

then came your sudden departure, that fatal

irrevocable moment, when the umbilical cord

severed, not by distance, but by the cruel, final

curtain of mortality, this journey through grief

I never packed for it, I never wanted to take, yet

here I am, a lost traveller, utterly and completely

The familiar landmarks I once navigated by, the

simple certainty of your being in my life, is gone

leaving only a vast, echoing emptiness, I stand in

the centre of a landscape I no longer recognise

under a sky that feels alien and cold, but mostly

I just feel lost on this journey, I am learning, slowly

maybe the goal not to be found, but to keep walking

The wilderness may never end, I may always feel lost

but I walk because your love, even in its agonising

absence, compels me ahead, I walk without your

physical presence, but forever with the indelible

mark you left on my soul, this is the journey of a

lost traveller, it is long, it is hard, it is often lonely

but Mum, I walk it for you, and with you, forever