A celebrity recounted a difficult experience in a video. Her relationship with her mother was always fraught. In the mother's last few days when she was very ill, she was living in this celebrity's house. The mother seemed to be fighting for her life, suffering too much. The celebrity said that she realised that it wasn't her mother but she who needed to let go. The celebrity had never heard words of love or affirmation from her mother. Every time she went into her room, she was hoping her mother would say something to her, about how proud she was of her, how much she loved her, and so on. But the words never seemed to come. The celebrity finally decided she would release her. She went to her own room with acceptance. The mother died soon after.

This story and the celebrity's enormous pain touched me deeply. Maybe many would think this celebrity was selfish? That even when the mother was on the threshold of death, she wanted to hear words to show she mattered to her mother? That in a way could seem like it was about herself? But I don't feel that way. I feel compassion and empathy towards her. I do not find her desire, a last desire of sorts even though it was her mother who was passing, selfish at all. I find a love that was never reciprocated, a wish to be able to hold a memory more affectionate than the reality she ever had, a possibility of exonerating her mother finally for her wounds, a reassurance of something that could only be expressed in words... a closure even. To have none of that... the pain of living on without any of that... I could imagine why she found it hard to let go...