After our mum died, we maxed out the credit cards and went on safari in the Serengeti | Ammar Kalia

My dad, my brother and I worried it might look weird to take our grief on holiday. But it felt right

The summer after my mum died, my brother came up with a plan. Rather than mark the first anniversary of her death in London, where we had all lived together, we should take ourselves on the most extravagant holiday possible. Why cry at home, he reasoned, when we could cry on the beach in luxury?

It was June 2014 and I was 20, on summer break from my second year at university. For the previous four years, I had been living with the fear and understanding that my mum’s death was imminent. She had been diagnosed with a rare form of sarcoma in 2009 and only given six months to live. Thankfully, a brutal surgery and experimental dose of chemotherapy helped her into remission before the cycle began again: surgery, chemo, recovery, fear.

Ammar Kalia is a writer and author of A Person is a Prayer

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