Remembering my beautiful mother 1984

My mother with her grand children at home in Coventry.

  My experience of my mother’s life after her death shocked me. I was shocked to see my mother turned into ashes and put into a plastic box. I was shocked to see her Madame Tussaud wax-like body in a coffin dressed in red for a bride to be in her next life.

My mother was a simple, shy woman and the only make up she ever wore on her face was her smile. Her gold nose stud, her pair of gold ear rings and her gold neck lace were the only jewellery she ever wore which signified her marriage status. My mother was peace maker in the family and well loved too. My mother was god fearing religious woman and had to fend for her self and the children when my father deserted her.

I accepted the fact that her Hindu culture had to dominate the final journey of her life on this planet; I had no right to object to her life in the next world, especially when she had a hard time in the life on my planet she left behind.

My mother would have liked me to leave her ashes in the hands of the men in my family because that 's what her culture demanded of the deceased. That's not what I did.  

What I did do with my mother’s ashes was the most important journey of my life; the story unfolds in the next chapter, headed “taking my mother to Heaven”.