Today she is dead and yes, it was my fault.

I lost my Mother last year. And this was unexpectedly. Though many would say she was old, for me, she was just 41 years. The previous week before she succumbed, we had conversed and I can say she was quite fine and healthy.
I had planned for her visit to my uncle and I booked a train that could drop her where my uncle would pick her. For those of you who have ever been in Kenya, you could understand the type of train I am talking about, constructed in 20th century. The journey would take about ten hours and this was not the first time she was using the train, she had done this several times. I remember, she was reluctant to go, but insisted and because of love she had for me, she accepted unwillingly and this was the last time I saw her alive, she died. My mother died, I think because of a broken heart. She merely decided she was done.
I am the first born in a family of two. My youngest sister is five years. My mother was not the best I can say, but she was determined to up bring us in the best way. At the age of seven, my mother divorced my father. Though I was young, but I remember it was on a Sunday. She relinquished and became a nun, though for quite some time. At this time, I was all left to my own and this forced me to go to the streets. The life went from bad to worse. We could be beaten by police and other people at their will and food was a thing of the past. The only thing that made me survive was drugs.
Anyway, my father committed suicide and died after suffering depression. I didn’t attend the funeral though I was really heartbroken. My mom had a way of identifying my weakness. Any achievement was delicately snubbed, and tinted for how it was actually a boast, or condemned against the heavy complexity being faced by my mom. After some time, she came and picked me from the streets and we went to a single rented house (8 by 8) and here is when I realized that my mother was pregnant. In that period, I tried to help her because she couldn’t work due to her pregnancy. However, this was never enough.
I tried to assist her how I could. Only I and my closest friends and good Samaritans supported her. I continued to help her even after she gave birth to my sister financially. What else could I do? Any aid was by no means enough. It was difficult, but I learned to sieve the put downs and never-ending subtle look of dissatisfaction and self shame.

Some months back, she sought to go to her preferred holiday spot. It was her link to her youth as well as to her family. I was trying organizing with my uncle, and it worked out in that we couldn’t go. She told me how awful I was and that she would not ever again trouble me and my life. I was done with it and I did not speak to her.
She struggled to reach me, but I just was not ready. On Thanksgiving, I spoke; it had been some months. I lived distance from her by then and I could not be with her, she was alone as well as I heard it in her voice. She must have been alone that night; it must have been awful for her. I planned to meet her for Christmas. She told me I had deserted her, I promised to meet her soon.

Today she is dead and yes, it was my fault.

I am the first born in a family of two. My youngest sister is five years. My moth