My mother passed away from cancer when I was four years old. Grief-stricken, I still considered myself fortunate to have been raised in a Tongan household: my father, stepmother, paternal grandmother and paternal aunts all shared the responsibility of raising me and my seven siblings. This is normal in Tongan culture as we have no word for “aunt” or “grandmother” or “uncle” or “grandfather” or “cousin”; instead, each of them is a type of mother, father or sibling.
Drilled into the front door of the two-storey brick house we shared in Mount Druitt was the phrase “Fe’ofa’aki”. I grew up in the house of “Love one another”.
