In the village where I grew up, death lived only in distant stories. It never entered our small circle of mud-brick houses and mango trees. We believed, without ever speaking it aloud, that we would live forever.

My world was painted in the colors I loved most. The grey of morning mist rolled over the river where we swam. Purple filled the dawn as we began our long walk to school. White clouds drifted lazily above us as we ran barefoot through the fields.

The whole village raised us. Mamie Evelyn Koffe would call me for lunch even when I was playing three houses away. Auntie Benedicte taught all the children to swim in the river, holding us steady until we found our courage. We walked miles together to school. Our voices rose in songs that made the distance feel shorter. Our laughter echoed across the farms all the way to Kosala Quarter, where we attended Fence School in Kumba.

We ate what the earth gave us, sweet potatoes, yams we helped dig, greens we plucked without question, corn we roasted over open fires. No one told us about nutrition or toxins. We simply ate, and we thrived. There was no television to tell us the world was dangerous. We learned from the sky, the soil, and the stories of our elders.

I remember pulling fresh leaves from the garden and eating them right there. Dirt still clung to the edges. The bitter-sweet taste of something alive filled my mouth. We drank from the river. We played until our bodies ached with happy exhaustion. Every night, we told stories — especially when the full moon hung bright outside. Then we went to sleep believing tomorrow would come, and the day after that, and forever after that.

It wasn’t until I was much older that death introduced itself to me. First came my grandmother, then my nephew, my mother Juliana, my sister Rose, and then other family members and neighbors. The most profound loss was my beloved daughter Cynthia, followed by my father Romanus. When death finally came, I realized something profound. Those years when I believed in forever weren’t a lie. They were the truest thing I’d ever known.

Because the joy we felt, that was eternal. The love that wrapped around us like the purple dawn never dies. The community that held us, the river that taught us courage, the earth that fed us, these things remain. They are woven into who we became.

To every mother whose heart knows the unbearable weight of loss, I offer this truth from my childhood: the happiness your child knew was real. Those moments when they believed in forever, when they laughed without worry, those moments are eternal. They exist outside of time, in a place where death cannot reach.

Your love painted their world in colors that will never fade. In the grey mist of morning grief and the purple dawn of remembering, peace will one day come. And in that white light, you will find them again, not gone, but transformed into something that lives forever in the soil of your heart.

We do not lose what we love deeply. It becomes part of the eternal landscape of who we are.

For grieving mothers: May you find comfort in knowing that every moment of joy you gave your child was a seed planted in forever.