A week from my 12th birthday, I waited for my mum to come and pick us kids up from primary school but she never came. The entire school emptied and I remember just standing there and wondering what was going on. Then we found out that she had been killed in a car accident on the way to pick us kids up from school. She was 37.
After mum died, I remember the adults arguing, then all of a sudden contact stopped and we were estranged from my maternal family. Dad remarried a very religious Hindu woman who helped him . . .