You never chased status, yet people respected you deeply. You never spoke loudly, yet your words remained with people for years
MUNEEB A FAIQ
Dear Mummy,
Three years have passed since you left, yet I still find myself speaking to you in quiet moments, as though you have merely stepped into another room.
I often think about your last days. You remained in a coma for a week while I travelled back from the other side of the globe, carrying guilt, fear, and hope across oceans.
And then, when I finally reached you, you miraculously opened your eyes, looked at me, and smiled and as always, told me some words of wisdom which proved to be true in every sense; those simple, unassuming sentences of yours that always arrived like verdicts wrapped in kindness.
It was not a dramatic moment. It was gentle, almost knowing, as if you had simply been waiting to say goodbye in your own dignified way. Waking up from coma to bid a dignified goodbye to your son is nothing short of a miracle. Soon after, you slipped back into silence and left this world.
That smile has stayed with me more powerfully than grief itself, and the joke about life that you spoke that time is still a real pearl of wisdom that guides me; one of those quiet Kashmiri truths that sounds like a joke until life proves you wrong for not believing it sooner. Your own divine comedy is in many ways better than Dante’s work.
You were a Kashmiri woman in the truest sense; resilient without announcing your strength, wise without trying to impress anyone, generous without ever making another person feel small.
I remember how elegantly you did your charities, and no one knew it, as if goodness, to you, lost its meaning the moment it was announced. You carried the old Kashmiri understanding that life is temporary, that sorrow visits every home, and that dignity lies in how gently we treat others despite all that.
You had an extraordinary sense of humour. Even in difficult times, you could say something so unexpectedly sharp and wise that people would fall silent for a moment before laughing; that brief pause where people realise they have just been gently outwitted by truth itself. That is exactly what you did before you bid a final goodbye to this world.
You had a way of reducing human arrogance to nothing with a single sentence delivered so softly that it almost sounded like mercy. I realise now that your humour was not merely wit; it was wisdom wearing a smile.
You never chased status, yet people respected you deeply. You never spoke loudly, yet your words remained with people for years. You taught us that intelligence without kindness is empty, and that generosity is not measured by wealth but by how much comfort one leaves in another person’s heart.
Everything I have achieved in life carries your fingerprints. The courage I have, the discipline I learned, the compassion I try to practice, all of it began with you. Like many mothers from Kashmir, you sacrificed quietly, without ceremony, without asking to be remembered for it.
But I remember.
I remember the way you welcomed people into our home. I remember your laughter. I remember your sayings that sounded simple at first and revealed their depth only years later. Those sentences that entered the mind lightly but stayed for life like permanent residents. I remember how you understood the passing nature of life better than most educated people ever will.
Perhaps that is why you lived with such grace.
The older I grow, the more I understand that wisdom is not found in books alone. Sometimes it lives in the calm voice of a mother who has seen hardship, understood people, and still chosen kindness.
Your life was not loud, but it was luminous.
And if I have become anything worthwhile in this world, it is because I first walked through yours.
(The author is a student)