‘Having to lay our mothers to rest – she who bore us and nurtured us — is a rite of passage meant to teach us what real love is all about, hopefully not a lesson some of us will only learn when it is too late.’
IN a span of one week, so many dear friends lost their mothers, as if there was a casting call in Heaven for the role of “ideal Mother.” And I shuttled between a wake in BGC and a wake in General Santos City to somehow share in the loss, though as I rule, I do not go to wakes, preferring to remember special people as they were when they were alive.
Less than a year ago, two other colleagues lost their mothers – and again, all I could do was express my condolences. Nothing can be said to erase the pain and the loss, and as the late Pope Francis advised in his book “Time to Dream,” very often the best way to comfort a bereaved is to simply stay quiet and listen.
On my UP High class chat group, a few classmates have, of late, also been losing their mothers. Because we are in our 60s, most of our mothers are in their 80s – way above and beyond the supposed average life expectancy of 70 years for a Filipina, which is a consolation, to some extent.
They have been able to live long and hopefully fruitful lives and have seen their children become parents of their own. And have doted on their grandchildren! But yes, there’s a time when all of us have to go, and for the mothers of my friends, the call has come almost one after another. That’s one call no one can escape from.
So of late, I’ve witnessed what I went through some 32 years ago when my mother, at the age of 58, had to heed Heaven’s call. Deep and at times inconsolable grief. Moments of quiet reflection. Then grief again. Then smiles when happy or fun moments are remembered. Then sadness and grief again. A cycle of emotions that a wake dulls and heightens – and then the moments of loneliness when the body has been interred and the flowers disposed of and the healthiest has left.
These moments – loneliness and longing, smiles and even laughter coming from fond remembrance – do not last a week or a year. Thirty-two years after we buried my mother, they come flooding back with the right trigger.
Like having to attend the wake of the mother of a dear friend.
This is a rite of passage that almost every adult has to go through. It is scarring. It is jarring. And because the mother’s love is like no other, it is gut-wrenching as can be, befitting that moment in your life when part of you dies away, only to remain alive in memory.
It is because we were loved by and loved our mothers that we feel the loneliness and pain from which there is no escape. Having to lay our mothers to rest – she who bore us and nurtured us — is a rite of passage meant to teach us what real love is all about, hopefully not a lesson some of us will only learn when it is too late.
