Photos: Erin Adams.
This year marks the 20th Mother’s Day that Shortland Street star Bella Kalolo-Suraj will have spent without her beloved mum Aneriueta (Teta). It’s a bittersweet day – one that she honours every year in the same way: by lighting a candle in front of a framed photo and raising a toast “to you, Mama”.
Next to the photo is a quarter-full bottle of the Body Shop White Musk oil, which was Teta’s favourite scent. Bella sometimes breathes it in. For a brief moment, she feels like her mum is still in the room wearing it.
Teta was only 53 when she lost her life to metastatic breast cancer. In the years leading up to her diagnosis, Bella’s mother knew that something was wrong with her body. She kept going back to the doctors.
“But she wasn’t heard,” shares the actor and singer. “Finally, she went back and they referred her for a scan. By then, the tumour was as big as a golf ball.
“She needed a mastectomy, so we held a farewell party for her boob and I thanked it for nurturing me as a baby. Mum dealt with it pretty well and with humour. She used to fling her faux breast out [that sat in her bra] every now and then. It was like her party trick!”
While there was no family history of breast cancer, Bella ponders whether the amount of stress Teta had been under was a factor.
“When you’re the backbone of your family in Samoa and your family here in New Zealand, you can’t help but make sacrifices, and hold on to a lot of stress and family secrets,” says Bella.
“She was bursting at the seams with it. And that has a massive impact on your health. Before she passed, she and Dad opened up to me and shared a lot of their struggles.”
Teta and her husband Fetuao “Fred” Lauvi Sopoaga were stalwarts of Christchurch’s Samoan community. She worked as a translator, as well as a teacher at Mairehau High School.
For Bella, who was in her early twenties, her mother’s death marked a big transition. She went from the safe, secure life she had known as a kid into an unfair, half grown-up world.
“Oh, I felt orphaned,” she tells candidly. “When Dad passed away two years later, I felt totally alone in the big, bad world. Because as a young adult, you think you’ve got it altogether, like, ‘Nah, I’m all good. I know what I’m doing!’
“When your parents are gone, you realise they’re not there to help you navigate all of those little moments. The times when you actually go, ‘What do I do now?’ I had to learn a lot of hard stuff by myself.”
Since then, Bella’s sought ways to educate others on the disease that took her mother’s life and wants to encourage other women to always get their mammograms on time.
When her Shorty character – fiery nurse Selina To’a – went through a breast cancer storyline on the soap, Bella was grateful to have input.
“Some people have made comments that Selina went through it really quickly,” she tells. “But honestly, I didn’t want to sit in that storyline for months. You take on things as an actor and I didn’t want to manifest it in a way. Yet I wanted to make viewers who’d been through breast cancer feel seen.”
While the grief of losing her parents still has a way of biting at her ankles, Bella’s learned to laugh as she figures out how grief and joy can hold hands.
“I do like to think of funny memories,” she grins. “Like, I’d come home to hearing them chant ‘Oo aah, Umaga’ over and over again. For context, former All Black Tana Umaga is my uncle on my biological dad’s side. They’d huddle up in bed watching rugby on TV, wearing the beanies and chanting.”
As she reflects on her career, Bella’s only regrets are that her parents never got to see their daughter on their favourite TV drama or see her win NZ TV Awards’ Personality of the Year.
“And they never met my lovely Suraj,” says Bella of her husband of four years, whom she met on a dating app.
The fun-loving couple were planning to head to India this year for an extravagant two-day wedding. However, they’ve since pushed that out to next July to allow more time for more friends to attend. So has she met her Indian in-laws yet?
“No, but they are coming out to New Zealand soon for three months!” she shares. “I’m so looking forward to spending time with them and having a surrogate mum and dad again.”
Women have a 95 percent chance of surviving breast cancer for five years or longer if the cancer is detected by a mammogram.
Free mammograms are available for women aged 45-69 through BreastScreen Aotearoa.
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