By Lilian Onyinye Okoloye

I was not ready for that phone call.
There are some sentences
that split a life in two
before you hear them,
and everything that comes after.

Mum is gone.

Even now,
those words still sound wrong.
I still catch myself
wanting to tell you something
something small,
something ordinary,
something you would have laughed at
or warned me about
in that way only you could.

Then I remember.
And the silence comes back.
Grief is strange.
It is not always crying
beside your photograph.
Sometimes it is cooking
and suddenly remembering
how you used to make it.

Sometimes it is hearing a voice
that sounds almost like yours
and turning before remembering
that you will not answer.

Sometimes it is reaching for the phone
because something happened
and you are still the first person
my heart wants to tell.

I thought losing you
would be one terrible moment.
I did not know
it would become
a thousand little moments
afterward.

Your chair.
Your name.
Your favourite things.
The stories I cannot hear again
except in my own memory.

People say,
“She is in a better place.”
Maybe.
But there are days
when I do not need an explanation.
I just need my mother.

I need your voice.
Your warmth.
Your presence in the room.
The subtle and caring scoldings
The comfort of knowing
that somewhere in this world
you existed
and I could still call you Mum.

You left when I least expected it,
and perhaps that is what hurts most—
how ordinary the day was
before everything changed.

The world did not stop.
Morning still came.
People still went to work.
The streets stayed busy.
Someone somewhere laughed.

And somehow,
I was expected to keep living
with a piece of my life
suddenly missing.

So I am learning grief
one day at a time.
I am learning that remembering you
does not always have to hurt.
That I can smile at a memory
without betraying the sadness.

That I can carry you
without being trapped
in the day I lost you.
Mum,
your life did not end
when your breathing stopped.

You remain
in the things you taught me,
in the love you gave,
in the stories we tell,
in the parts of me
that became who I am
because you were here.

I cannot bring you back.
I cannot rewrite that day.
But I can keep loving you
in the only way I know now—
by remembering,
by living,
by carrying your name
gently through the years.

And when I miss you,
I will let myself miss you.
Because some people
are too deeply loved
to ever become
just a memory.

You are my mother.
And even death
cannot change that.

ABOUT THE POET

Lilian Onyinye Okoloye is an interdisciplinary writer and professional whose life’s canvas spans healthcare, technology, and digital landscapes. Holding academic foundations in both Computer Science Education (BSc) and Digital Marketing Communication (MSc), she blends the precision of a technologist with the strategic instincts of a visionary storyteller. Grounded by her deeply empathetic work as a Healthcare Assistant, Lilian’s writing serves as a mirror and a bridge—distilling complex emotions, loss, and resilience into shared human meaning.