The Thing I Never Said to My Mother

The Thing I Never Said to My Mother

By Hasnain Shah

I have rehearsed this conversation a thousand times in my head.

In every version, my mother sits at the small wooden table by the window, the one with the faint burn mark from a long-forgotten cup of tea. Sunlight slants across her face, catching in the silver threads of her hair, and for once, she looks smaller than I remember. In some versions of the scene, I am calm. In others, I am trembling. But in all of them, I finally say the thing I never said.

In real life, I never did.

Instead, I learnt how to swallow my words the way you learn to hold your breath underwater — out of necessity, not choice.

My earliest memory of my mother is her standing in the kitchen, back turned to me, shoulders tense as she chopped onions with surgical precision. The radio was playing something soft and old, a song about longing that I didn’t understand at the time. I remember tugging at her sleeve, wanting her attention, wanting her warmth. She turned just enough to look at me, eyes sharp, tired, but not unkind.

“Not now,” she said. “I’m busy.”

I believed her. I always did.

As I grew older, I came to understand that my mother was a woman carved by sacrifice. She worked too many hours, slept too little, and carried a heaviness in her chest that she never spoke about. People called her strong. I called her distant. But I didn’t have the language for it then. All I knew was that love, in our house, felt like something carefully rationed.

There were moments of tenderness, of course. Her hand smoothing my hair when I was sick. The way she wrapped me in her cardigan on cold nights. The quiet pride in her eyes when I brought home a good report card. But those moments were always fleeting, like birds landing briefly before taking flight again.

The thing I never said to her began forming somewhere in my teenage years, when our silences grew heavier and our arguments sharper.

I remember one evening in particular.

I was seventeen, sitting on the edge of my bed with my backpack open, college brochures scattered across the floor. My mother stood in the doorway, arms crossed, eyes clouded with worry.

“You don’t need to go so far,” she said.

“I do,” I replied, voice thin and brittle. “This is my future.”

She sighed, rubbing her temples. “You think I don't know that? But what about us? What about this family?”

In that moment, I felt something ugly twist inside me — frustration, guilt, anger, and love all tangled together. I wanted to scream that I needed space, that I felt smothered, that I had been lonely even while living under her roof. But instead, I bit my tongue.

What I never said was this: I love you, but sometimes you make me feel invisible.

Years passed. I left for college. Life moved forward in a blur of late-night study sessions, new friendships, heartbreaks, and small triumphs. My mother and I spoke on the phone often, but our conversations remained safely superficial.

“How are your classes?”

“Fine.”

“Are you eating?”

“Yes.”

“Call me more.”

“I will.”

Neither of us ever crossed the invisible line between small talk and truth.

Then came the day everything shifted.

My mother fell ill.

Not suddenly, not dramatically — just slowly, quietly, like a light dimming over time. I came home more often. I sat beside her on the couch, watching her knit even as her hands trembled. I helped her with groceries, doctor’s appointments, and things that felt painfully mundane until I realised how precious they were.

One afternoon, as rain tapped softly against the windows, she turned to me and said, “Do you think I did a good job raising you?”

The question hung in the air between us, fragile and heavy.

I looked at her — really looked at her — and saw not just my mother, but a woman who had done her best in a world that had not been kind to her. I saw her exhaustion, her love, her fear, her quiet pride, and her deep, unspoken guilt.

I opened my mouth.

And still, I hesitated.

Instead of saying everything I felt, I gave her a safe answer.

“You did your best,” I said.

She nodded, eyes glassy, and turned back to her knitting.

That night, lying awake, I realised what the thing I never said truly was.

It wasn’t just one sentence. It was a lifetime of unsaid words.

I wanted to tell her that I understood her now — that I saw how hard she had worked, how much she had sacrificed, and how deeply she had loved even when she didn’t know how to show it.

I wanted to tell her that I forgave her for the moments she failed me, because I now knew how impossible motherhood could be.

Most of all, I wanted to tell her that I had always loved her, even in the moments when I felt hurt, distant, or angry.

But the opportunity slipped through my fingers like sand.

My mother passed away quietly one winter morning, the kind where the world feels too still. I sat beside her hospital bed, holding her hand, feeling the pulse fade beneath my fingers. I whispered everything I could think of — apologies, gratitude, love — but it felt too late, like speaking to a room after the person you wanted to reach had already left.

Now, when I think of her, I don’t remember the arguments or the silences. I remember the smell of onions in the kitchen, the warmth of her cardigan, and the way she smiled when she thought no one was looking.

The thing I never said to my mother still lives inside me, lodged somewhere between my heart and my throat.

Maybe that is how love works — incomplete, imperfect, always a little too late.

And yet, in my quietest moments, I imagine her sitting at that wooden table by the window, sunlight on her face, listening patiently as I finally speak.

In that version of the story, she hears me.

And somehow, that feels enough.