One day, while I was in Los Banos, Laguna, working on my graduate degree, a lady approached me selling a cookbook. Judging the book by its cover (a thing I should've never done), it looked good to me and so I bought a copy. The book went straight to the post office, dropped in the mail, sent to my mother-in-law, Mama Alice. While the lady postal worker (postwoman?) weighed the book, calculated the postage, etc, it was mentioned to her that the book was going to my mother-in-law. She got her eyes wide-opened. When asked why the face? With a grin (and without a hint of sarcasm, I believed), she said she hardly knew of a son-in-law so close to his mother-in-law!
What the lady said holds a grain of salt. For the son-in-law and mother-in-law relationship, has always been stereotyped in the boob tube, silver screen as well as in the radio, as the cat-and-dog kind. This relationship does exist in real life. I have had first-hand experience with this, with my very own mother and few of my brod-in-laws.
I am privileged to become a part of the Mozar family. And I am so honored to have Papa Cesar and Mama Alice to be my second parents. For the past 25 years that I became affiliated with them, I considered them my very own.
Mama Alice, was no ordinary person. She was a teacher, an artist, a wife and a mother of five talented children. I came to know more and more about her as the years keep coming. Through the artworks (paintings and cross stitch) she generously gave us, the cards she relentlessly sent us, and the times, though always short and limited, we spent with her during our visits to Mainit. Caring, thoughtful, very loving and generous, this is to list a few words that may best describe her. She lived her life to the fullest! She had a very rewarding career which culminated in retirement as a Division Supervisor. A life so colorful and soulful as she expressed it in every stroke of her paint brush. A great sense of fulfillment having raised their children, all successful and having families of their own. And endowed with fabulous grandchildren and greatgrandchildren! It all seemed, Mama has had everything she must have wished for...But...life, like a story, it ends. And like a race, it's not over until it is over. And so the celebration for victory comes at its close!
In the past month or so, Mama was waging a tough war with infirmities that come with her advancing age. She fought it hard, but it seemed she was losing ground, despite of modern medicine intervention, as each day came. Finally, today, she succumbed to and embraced the ultimate - her demise,
Mama's passing is a very sorrowful event, especially to those she left behind. But her death makes her even larger than life. During this very difficult time, I enjoin everybody in the Mozar Family: Papa Cesar, Pinky, Boy Cesar, my wife Bingbing, Toto and Michael, to hold a grandiose celebration behind their grieving and mourning. For Mama's life is like a best seller book, well written and read by many! Hers is a life well lived!
Rest in peace, Mama Alice! You may be gone but you will continue to live in our hearts!