My Angel in Human Skin

Date: 12/17/2025

Mum is being overly loving. Right in my face, smothering me in kisses, telling me — again and again — how much she loves me. It’s unsettling. She’s never been one for open displays of affection. Not like this. Her love has always spoken a different language. It sounds like cutlery on plates, food pressed into my hands. It looks like a bill quietly paid when she knows my pockets are light. It feels like the steady reassurance of her voice at the end of the phone, no matter the hour. Practical. Unwavering. Love that doesn’t announce itself — it just shows up. I’m surprised the sheer volume of tears she has carried over the years hasn’t done her some lasting harm. She’s held space for it all — the highs, the lows, the lower-than-lows. My human life raft. She knows the right words instinctively, how to smooth the sharp edges of the world and settle my soul. She reads me like a book I never meant to leave open. I don’t know who I’d be without her. She is my world — my angel in human skin. The thought of losing my mum hits me with a force so physical it feels as though its weight could drive me through the earth’s core and out the other side. I want to believe I’m a good daughter, though doubt creeps in more often than I’d like. Mum is a saint who keeps on giving. She asks for nothing and gives everything — time, patience, pieces of herself she never expects returned. I don’t think I’m built that way. But she is. Selflessness lives in her bones. She gave what should have been the prime of her life to caring for her brother John, who is slowly fading into the fog of dementia. When the world turned away, she stayed. She fought his corner relentlessly, even as the weight of it robbed her of sleep and stirred her anxiety into something loud and unmanageable. She is the strongest person I know. Fiercely independent. Quietly capable. There is nothing she cannot do. When we lost dad, she didn’t collapse — she recalibrated. She learned to live again, in her own right. She picked up tools and learned the language of paperwork. She lifted bonnets, fixed engines, navigated forms and deadlines. She even stepped into the world of technology and bought herself an iPad. All the things dad once did — until he left behind a vast, echoing absence she was forced to fill herself. It was me who carried the guilt of his leaving. The image of mum alone lodged itself deep inside my chest. I imagined her rattling around the house, with no one to share her day with, no one to watch TV with in the evenings, no one to sit beside in that comfortable, wordless silence. So when dad was given his cancer diagnosis, their world didn’t just crack — it collapsed. They had plans. They’d just bought a camper van, ready to begin the next chapter. How merciless life can be. For years, mum couldn’t look at a camper van without tears rising. The Countdown theme tune meant the TV was switched off immediately. Dad’s chair remained untouched in the corner, as if waiting. At night, she stayed on her side of the bed — muscle memory refusing to let go. But time, slow and insistent, did its work. She began to move forwards. Bagging up dad’s clothes after years of them filling half the wardrobe. Letting go of things he’d hoarded in the shed. Finding a rhythm that no longer relied on footsteps behind her — one step instead of two. She never wanted to meet anyone else. She’d been with dad since she was nineteen. He was the love of her life. They were each other’s world — all either of them had ever known. Besides, she joked, it was nice not having to endure nightly soap operas. The remote was hers now. She could sprawl across the bed like a starfish if she wanted. She doesn’t. She still keeps to her side. No — we don’t do emotions. Never have. We tuck away our pain, swallow our private battles whole. We orbit each other’s grief carefully, as though letting it surface might pull us both under. But presence has always been enough. It was enough then. It is enough now. No grand gestures or constant affection could rival the love we share. We show it by turning up. By choosing each other. Every Monday. Our sacred day. Mother and daughter. So when mum presses another kiss to my face, I laugh and tell her, “Will you stop with that mushy crap?” Because love doesn’t always look like what we expect. Sometimes it’s quiet. Sometimes it’s awkward. Sometimes it just keeps turning up — steady, familiar, and impossibly irreplaceable.