Mother's love

In a small village, surrounded by fields that turned golden in spring, lived a woman named Sakina. She was not rich, not famous, nor highly educated—but she carried within her the strength of a thousand storms and the warmth of a thousand suns.

Sakina was a widow by the time her youngest child turned three. Her husband, a laborer, had died of illness, leaving behind five children and nothing but debts and a mud-brick house. Neighbors whispered that she wouldn’t survive, that her children would grow up wild and uneducated.

But they didn’t know Sakina.

She wiped her tears the day after the funeral, tied her scarf tighter, and began working in the fields. She also cleaned homes, stitched clothes, and sold fresh milk from the one cow her husband had left behind. Every coin she earned was divided into two parts: food and education.

She never bought herself new clothes. She stitched the old ones again and again. She never ate until all her children had eaten. And every night, no matter how tired, she would help them with their homework under the flickering light of an old lantern.

“Study hard,” she’d whisper, her fingers calloused and sore. “You must never bow your heads before poverty.”

Her eldest son, Hamid, wanted to be an engineer. Her second, Bilal, dreamed of becoming a doctor. Her daughter Alina loved to write, while the two younger boys followed their elder siblings with open eyes and quiet admiration.

Sakina pushed them all forward. She sold her bangles for Hamid’s entrance fees. She walked ten kilometers once to buy used books for Bilal. She stayed up all night during Alina’s exam week, cooking her favorite meals and lighting incense to ease her stress.

Years passed, and her efforts bore fruit.

Hamid got a government job in the city. Bilal went abroad for higher studies. Alina became a journalist in the capital. The two younger ones followed, chasing their own ambitions, wings wide and hearts high.

Sakina waved them off with pride in her eyes and tears in her heart.

In the beginning, they called often. Sent money. Wrote letters. Promised to return for Eid, for her birthdays, for the first harvest.

But slowly, the calls grew less. The letters stopped. The money was sent occasionally, more like duty than love.

And the visits? They never came.

Years melted away like wax under a forgotten candle.

Sakina’s hair turned white. Her hands, once strong, now trembled. Her eyesight faded, and so did her hopes.

She still sat outside her home every evening, her eyes fixed on the village road, waiting.

“They’ll come,” she’d say to neighbors. “Maybe this Eid. Maybe this winter.”

The neighbors pitied her, but no one said anything. They watched her grow frail, still cooking meals for children who never returned, still folding clothes they had outgrown.

One winter, she fell sick. Very sick.

A local boy, whose fees she once paid when he had no books, took her to the hospital.

She lay on the bed, eyes half-open, whispering names that didn’t echo back.

“Hamid… Bilal… Alina…”

No one came.

On a chilly morning, when the fog kissed the earth and birds flew low, Sakina’s soul left her tired body. She died with her hand clutching an old, torn photograph of her children—smiling, young, innocent.

The funeral was quiet. A few villagers came. The boy she helped buried her with tears in his eyes. “She was more than a mother,” he said. “She was light.”

Weeks later, the news reached her children.

Hamid read it in a message while in a meeting. He paused for a second, sighed, and then went back to his file.

Bilal received a call and whispered, “Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’un.” Then he muted his phone and continued watching television.

Alina cried silently for a while, holding an old letter from her mother. But she didn’t return home. “Work is busy,” she told herself.

None of them came to visit her grave.

Years passed.

One day, Hamid—now older, successful, wealthy—visited the village for a political campaign. A journalist asked him, “You’re from here, right? Your mother was Sakina?”

He nodded, unsure.

“She raised the village,” the journalist said. “Taught so many children when no one could afford books. She was our mother too.”

Hamid felt a crack in his heart.

Later that night, he walked to her grave, now covered in wildflowers and silence. He knelt, touched the soil, and for the first time in years, cried.

“I’m sorry, Ammi,” he whispered. “We left you. You never left us.”

But it was too late.

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Moral Theme:

A mother’s love is the most selfless force in the world. She sacrifices her comfort, youth, and dreams to raise her children with dignity, knowledge, and values. Yet, in the rush of success and worldly gain, many forget the very hands that lifted them. The true measure of a person lies not in their achievements, but in how they honor those who gave them everything without asking for anything in return.