A Love That Remains

Kate’s recent piece about her mum stayed with me long after I’d finished reading it. It made me reflect on my own mum, and on the ways love is expressed, remembered, and carried with us through life. As Pride Month invites us to celebrate love in all its forms, I found myself thinking about the love my mum showed me when I needed it most, and how that love continues to shape me.

When I came out to my mum many years ago, it wasn’t a single conversation. It was a week of tears, turmoil, and rehearsing words that felt impossible to say out loud. I remember going over them repeatedly in my head, as if rehearsing enough might make them easier, or less frightening, or less likely to change everything.

I was terrified.

When I finally told her, it didn’t come out neatly. It stumbled and broke apart as I spoke. She looked at me for a moment – one that felt long enough for me to reconsider every decision I’d ever made – and then, after some time, simply said, “We love you.”

And that was it.

Or at least, that’s the tidy version I often tell. The truth was messier. There were questions, emotions, a letter, and awkward pauses where no one quite knew what to do next. But underneath it all was the same message, steady and clear: we love you.

No speeches. No long explanations. Just three words that, in that moment, meant everything.

Life carried on much as it always had. We talked about family, work, holidays, and what was for dinner. My sexuality was rarely, if ever, mentioned again. For a long time, I didn’t quite know what to make of that silence. Part of me had expected more conversation; another part had feared distance. Instead, there was simply continuity.

Over time, I’ve come to understand that my mum’s love was rarely expressed through words alone. It showed itself in small, ordinary acts: meals waiting on the table, favourite foods cooked without me asking, phone calls to check I’d arrived safely, cups of tea placed down beside me, birthday cards chosen with care, and countless gestures that only now I recognise as care.

Looking back, I realise how fortunate I was. Many LGBTQ+ people fear rejection, and too many experience it. I know my story could have been very different. Instead, I was met with love. Not perfect love, and not always spoken love, but steady love that did not ask me to be anything other than myself.

Today, my mum lives with dementia.

There is much that dementia takes. It affects memory, conversation, and the sense of time. Yet what continues to surprise me is how often love remains. Even when names are harder to reach and sentences drift away, there are still moments that feel unmistakably like her: a smile, a laugh, a familiar warmth in her expression, or a glimpse of the woman who raised me shining through.

As dementia teaches me how fragile memory can be, I find myself holding more tightly to what I know with certainty. Not just what is remembered, but what is felt.

I know I was loved.

I know that when I was most afraid, my mum chose love over fear.

And I know that even now, in a quieter and more uncertain present, that love has not disappeared. It remains in fragments, in gestures, in presence.

During Pride Month, we celebrate visibility, authenticity, and belonging. We celebrate the courage it takes to live openly and the communities that make that possible.

But Pride is also, for me, a celebration of love in its many forms.

The loud love that fills streets with colour and refuses to be hidden.

The joyful love of chosen family and community.

And the quieter love found in everyday acts of care: shared meals, phone calls, and someone making sure you are looked after without needing to be asked.

As someone of faith, I often return to a simple truth. There is much that people argue about in religion, but when I think about what has sustained me, I come back to love.

A love that welcomes.

A love that stays.

A love that makes room for every part of who we are.

This Pride Month, I pray that every LGBTQ+ person may know that kind of love: love made visible, love made tangible, love that quietly says, “We love you.”

Because long after many things are forgotten and memories fade, love remains.