"I want to go out and play with my friends!" Isang as I twirled past the rain-spattered window.

"You can playwith me. I'm your friend, aren't I?" my mother questioned with a smile,pessimism in her eyes.

"Silly Mummy, you're not a friend, you're mymum," I giggled, before prancing out of the kitchen, completely content withthe fact that I had corrected my silly Mummy's ignorance. But I was the ignorantone.

For a full year I have been recalling moments like these when I tookfor granted my mother's helping hand, her shoulder to lean on, her comfortingwords.

How could a parent be considered a friend? Yet isn't a friendsomeone who listens? Someone who has differences but also similarities to whichyou can relate? A person who is there to comfort you and tell you everything isgoing to be okay? And doesn't a friend believe in you even when the world isagainst you? My mum passed the friend test whenever she was challenged, but ittook me 15 years to begin to open my eyes to this. And then it took me only onesecond to admit to myself that my mum was indeed a friend, my best friend. Themoment I woke up was the moment my mother fell asleep, in my arms, foreternity.

It was a Sunday morning in October when my father shook me awakeand told me that I should come say good-bye to my mother. Good-bye? What did hemean? Was she going to the hospital again? Were they moving her into a rehabcenter?

When I got to her bedside I started to cry. She wasn't going tothe hospital, or a rehab center - she was dying. I grasped her hand and all Icould manage to scream was "I love you, Mum! I love you, Mum!" She knewthat, I'm sure, but I never told her that she was my best friend. I sat with herand watched her slip away, away from my brothers and sister, and away from mydad. She couldn't talk, she couldn't see, but she could hear. When she was gone Irealized I had lost my mother and my best friend at the same time.

Forthe past year I have stayed wide awake while the world around me has slept. Ihave searched for reasons behind the inevitable; I have hunted for answers toimpossible questions. It's been hard for me to pick up the pieces and move on; mylife has completely flipped around, and I have found new perceptions that my eyeshad been shielded from. I have lived in a different person's shoes. As much as Iwould like to go back to my own, I know they have grown too small for me now.I'll never throw away my old shoes, or even replace them. I simply wear anotherpair that gives me the support I need, for the time being. My new shoes willnever be like the ones I have outgrown, but in a strange way, I'm getting used toa new way of walking.