A LETTER TO MOTHER

Dear Inang,

I'm sorry this comes late for Mother's Day. During that day, I couldn't write a single note for you. I tried, but all I could remember was that morning in the kitchen a month before. It was the most poignant scene, the one I could easily recall; though at that time, I didn't realize its effect on me. I think of it now, like a reader flipping through the pages of an old photo album, turning back to that event in just one glance.

It was the morning I arrived with my brother and two sisters from the hospital in San Fernando. Tatang, whom we fetched with a hired ambulance, was lying lifeless, half-covered with a blanket on the wooden bed in the sala. While everyone around me was crying and groaning, I stood there frozen. My heart was in ecstatic pain. I was looking out the window, but seeing nothing. I was contemplating our loss when you suddenly came to me, held my shoulder, and sobbed.

“Anak, your father’s gone... It shouldn’t be today; I had wished for more years with him.”

There are simply no words to say to a woman who has just lost her husband. But then I smiled—not in an attempt to comfort you, but as a silly effort to understand my own situation through your words.

“Inang, it’s good you had Father, your husband, for almost 50 years. I had my wife for only 13 years of my life.”

You experienced a jolt of realization. While earlier you wanted to be comforted by one of your children, now you wanted to comfort me, your widowed son. So I embraced you, real hard, not only to show how much I appreciated you understanding my situation, but also to hide the tears that started to well in my eyes. I looked up and said no more.

Honestly, it may sound sentimental or childish to you, but I still find that in so many situations, all I want is my wife—the mother of my children. I wanted to live with her and grow old with her. Even now, I still grieve for my three children who were left motherless at a very young age. They no longer have the privilege of having a mother like you to comfort them. If they were to lose me now, they would have no mother to turn to for comfort, no mother to repay with love. My children will never have the chance to give this kind of letter or note, telling their mother how profoundly they appreciate her at any point in their lives.

I'm glad I still have you at my age. I might have said this before, but I love to say it again: I admire you a lot. You are the strongest person I have ever known. You are a pro when it comes to taking the hard road for your loved ones. Despite the hardships you endured with Father when we were young, and the persistence, heartache, and hard work it took to raise us and send us to school—with very little help from him—you never gave up. To make ends meet, you kept up with your dressmaking job at home, opened a grocery store for a time, and went about town knocking on every door for loans to finance our schooling. And look what you achieved: you have been rewarded with the joy of seeing all seven of your children graduate with college degrees, keeping your family intact and complete. Until today.

You've been a miracle worker, a healer, a superwoman. But time has taken its toll on you, and now I see how old you have become, how vulnerable you are to this latest trial, and how deep your loss is. I have observed this decline since last year, when you lost young Ram-Ram, your favorite grandson. He was the lovely boy you and Father took care of from infancy until my sister brought him to Bulacan, where he died in a freak accident.

I have reservations about giving you this advice, just as you gave it to me three years ago. But I have to say it, if only to go on with this letter. As you've said, God will take care of us. With Him, we will overcome the cause of our grief and its aftermath—like enduring the first anniversary of his death, or future family occasions without him. Life must go on, and death is just another lap of our journey. We have a reunion to look forward to (with my wife, Father, and Ram-Ram) when we leave this world. As they say, we are forever connected to the people we love. Death takes the physical person from our lives, but there is so much that death cannot take from us.

So, Inang, I apologize for this. Instead of a brief love note or a standard message of concern for the occasion—the kind you can easily read in my Facebook posts—this raw letter is all you got from me.

My siblings and I still hold dear the traditional Filipino family value that children must support their parents when they grow old and can no longer support themselves. So, though we all have our own struggles, and are currently crippled by the grief of Father's death, we are here to take care of you now.

Belated Happy Mother’s Day.

Your Son