My mother died in 2022.
Like anyone who has lost a parent, I still find myself thinking, "I should tell Mummy about this," before remembering that I can't.
Grief has a way of surprising you like that.
Losing her also changed something else. It changed how I remember her.
When I was young, she was simply my mother. I saw her through the eyes of a daughter—someone who made decisions I didn't always understand, someone I sometimes argued with, someone whose expectations could feel frustrating, especially when I was trying so hard to figure out who I was.
Like many mothers and daughters, we had a complicated relationship. There were years when we misunderstood each other more often than we understood each other. Looking back, I know I wasn't always kind to her. I carried a lot of anger and confusion that had very little to do with her, even though she was often the one closest to it.
At the time, I couldn't see beyond my own experience.
Age has a way of changing that.
As I've grown older, I've started thinking less about my childhood and more about my mother's adulthood.
Who was she before she became my mum?
She was a young English woman who grew up during the Second World War. Her father went off to war and spent years as a prisoner of war. Her family lived through uncertainty and loss. She trained as a dress designer in London before leaving England on her own for Canada, intending to explore the world.
Instead, she met my father shortly after arriving in Montreal. They married, built a life together, raised two children, and eventually settled into the rhythm that so many women of her generation found themselves living: caring for everyone else before caring for themselves.
Only now do I find myself wondering how lonely she must have been sometimes.
Painting was always part of her life.
As children, my brother and I were constantly encouraged to draw, paint, make things, and invent little creative projects. At the time, I simply thought she was keeping us occupied.
Now I think she was giving us something much greater.
She was teaching us that creativity is a place you can go.
She painted without worrying whether the result was perfect. She experimented. She played. She let colour lead the way. I don't think she ever sat me down and explained this philosophy. She simply lived it.
Without realizing it, I absorbed those lessons.
Years later, after I became an artist myself, I began recognizing pieces of her in my own process.
When I walk into my studio today, I don't begin with a rigid plan. I begin with curiosity. I trust the painting to tell me where it wants to go.
That freedom came from somewhere.
It came from her.
One of the strange gifts of getting older is that you slowly stop expecting your parents to have had all the answers. Instead, you begin to appreciate how they were navigating life for the first time, just as we are.
I don't remember my mother as perfect.
I don't think she would have wanted that.
I remember her as creative.
Resilient.
Curious.
A woman who carried more than I understood at the time.
I wish I had asked her more questions.
Not because I need answers now, but because I would have loved to know her—not only as my mother, but as the young woman who crossed an ocean, built a new life, and quietly taught her daughter that a blank sheet of paper is never something to fear.
Every time I paint, I think a little piece of that lesson is still with me.
It may be the greatest gift she ever gave me.