But My Smile Still Stays On

On learning bravery before understanding loss

I’m telling this story now as an adult.
But the boy inside it was ten.

At ten, I believed walls had feelings.
Not because they spoke, but because they noticed.

Especially the wall in the rented house we moved into after Mummy died. It wasn’t her house, and yet, for a while, it carried her presence… quietly, without asking questions.

That wall had held her photograph.

I used to look for it instinctively, the way you look for something familiar before you realise it’s no longer there. When it disappeared, the space it left behind felt louder than the room itself.

No one explained when or why it was taken down.
Photographs, I learned early, can vanish without warning.

What stayed was the confusion—the sense that something essential had been removed without ceremony, without discussion, as though the act itself needed no acknowledgement.

I didn’t yet have the words for what I was feeling.
Only the growing awareness that life was changing in ways no one had prepared me for.

No one told me that hearts take longer to catch up than households.
Or that while adults reorganise lives with announcements and assurances, children are left to read the silence between them.

What they did tell me… efficiently, briskly, the way adults deliver difficult news when they want to be done with it… was this:

“Daddy is marrying again.”
“Your new mummy will be very loving.”
“Be a good boy, okay?”

That was the full briefing.

No one mentioned that Daddy would talk less. Not because he loved me less, but because grown-ups often walk around with invisible thunderstorms above their heads.
No one mentioned that Granny would return to Kottayam once the new mummy arrived, as if her watch had ended.
No one mentioned that life wouldn’t simply continue, but quietly rearrange itself.

Adults say the strangest things to children during moments like these.
They expect quick nods, tidy acceptance, cooperation without questions.
They want to complete the task and move on.

Children, unfortunately for them, stay behind and feel everything.

But there was one conversation that stayed.

Mummy had called me into her room one afternoon—the room I was allowed into only occasionally. After the surgery for the brain tumour, she was almost always in bed, with people moving in and out, adjusting pillows, whispering instructions.

That day, she asked them to step outside.

One side of her body lay still, but she herself was steady. She had always lived that way. Never dramatic. Never collapsing under circumstance. Carrying herself with quiet, exemplary strength.

She told me she was going to die soon.
Not with fear.
Not with tears.
Just with clarity.

She told me Daddy would marry again.
She told me she had met the lady he would marry.
“She is a good person,” Mummy said.
“She will take good care of you.”

Then she said something else. Something born of love and an unmistakable worry for me.

“Give her the same love you give me.”

At ten, I didn’t understand the weight of what she was asking.
I didn’t realise how fast the world would move once she was gone.

I cried.

Not quietly.
Not politely.
I cried the way children do when something far too big suddenly lands in their lap.

Mummy didn’t.

She watched me closely, anxiety flickering in her eyes, not for herself, but for me. For the life I would have to live without her.

“Wipe your tears,” she said gently.

Her eyes held mine, calm and certain, as if she was lending me her courage.

“Be brave.”

Not as comfort wrapped in softness.
As strength handed over with care.

Everything in the way she spoke carried resolve, love, and urgency… like a mother making sure her child was prepared before she had to step away.

I nodded then. Not because I was ready, but because that’s what children do when they’re afraid, and the strongest person they know is asking them to hold steady.

Later, when life began to move quickly—new house, new routines, new relationships—I understood why Mummy had spoken the way she did.

She wasn’t preparing me for change.
She was protecting me from resentment.

So I learned early that I had a responsibility… to not create problems, to not make things harder, to be good and agreeable while the adults around me found their footing again.

And somewhere in the middle of all that adjusting, learning, and quiet obedience…

my smile stayed on.

It wasn’t pretending.
It wasn’t courage.

It was a ten-year-old doing exactly what his mother had asked—being brave, even when he didn’t yet understand what bravery would cost.

Today, as an adult, I recognise that smile for what it truly was.
It was carrying my mother’s concern for me forward.
It was honouring her strength by surviving gently.

Photographs come down from walls.
Houses change.
People move on.

But some instructions… given calmly, bravely, by a mother who never once broke…
stay forever.

And so does the smile.

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Author’s Note

This story is written from the distance of years, looking back at a ten-year-old who didn’t yet have the language for loss, but learned the posture of courage early.

What stays with me is not the grief itself, but my mother’s steadiness. Even in her most vulnerable moments, she was more concerned about the life I would have to live without her than about the one she was leaving behind.

Her words—be brave—were meant to travel with me, quietly, across years I could not yet imagine.

This moment, and many others like it, form the emotional spine of my memoir, You Told Me To Be Brave, scheduled for release later this month.

Thank you for reading, and for holding space for a memory that still teaches me how to stand.