In Memoriam: Farewell My Dear Nanay

     Suddenly, I have to travel to the Philippines. I have to be in her funeral and bid my last farewell. This time, even if she could hear me no more. While my mind was wandering, clueless what awaits for me in this sudden and very long journey yet a very short trip to the Philippines, memories were rushing back to the days of my rebellious youth, when I lived with my parents. Thoughts about what  Nanay kept telling me came afloat.  Her words  I thought, were meaningless, as I trekked down the ‘teen years’ of my  life. Her words were, to me,  like a ‘broken record’ which kept playing over and over. My brain’s prefrontal lobe, obviously, was not quite in shape yet back then.

     And as I continued indulging with my self-reckoning back to that ‘glorious past’, I had to put up a fight against my lacrimal glands, holding back tears that build up from rolling down. For ‘grown up guys never cry’, so says a song!

     I was in a small plane on the first of the four legs in this journey. I was seated next to a mom, may be in her  late 30’s or early 40’s, with an unpredictably friendly  months’-old baby girl on her lap, another baby girl may be less than two years and probably a five-year old son, both sitting in front of us. The baby, obviously having cold, smiled at me when her mom sat back as I claimed my window seat. The mom, obviously had her hands full with the  kids, stopping the son to catch  wireless signal for the iphone she just switched it to airplane mode, the friendly baby mumbling something gibberish demanding for something as she played with her mom’s credit cards and driver license card. The  two-year old was busy playing Dora on her electronic gizmo. At take off, the baby started throwing  tantrum and cried so loudly. Mom was trying to appease her, making sounds every animal shown on each page of the baby book she leafed through, while at the same time trying to keep the two-year old buckled up as she was standing on her seat. I watched them as I leaned my head against the airplane window.

     The scenario reminded me of my Nanay, who had to deal with more than three kids. Personally, I found it highly unthinkable how my parents raised us. And it is even more unimaginable how my Nanay shaped and molded us.

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     How well do I know my Nanay? Not well enough, especially about her childhood life. I thought she was a child out of wedlock. Orphaned at an early age, when her single mom who raised her and  two other siblings, died. Her uncle (her mom’s brother) took custody and raised her and her sister. Perhaps, the strict and disciplinarian way the uncle raised her made her a strong woman with a keen sense of vision.

She grew up wanting in many things. Love of a family growing up as a child, formal higher education, wealth. I wondered if she ever had friends. She got married to my Tatay at age 16, during the height of the World War II. And that was when our big family started! Through the years that followed, she was held hostage in domesticity, single handedly raising kids which kept coming every two years, while Tatay was away, his  menial job took him away from home.  Just like the mom I met in the plane, who seemed a little unkempt and oblivious about herself, I thought, this was how Nanay lived her life, for so long.

     Nanay, by default, exemplified living a life of modesty and simplicity. Minimalist when it comes to material things. Her clothes could very well be outnumbered by the fingers in her hands. She brushed aside and laughed at a comment of my older sister’s high school classmate that ‘every time he saw  Nanay, she was wearing  same dress’.

     But nothingness is not all there is for Nanay.  She had big hopes and dreams for us. In her broken English, she would keep telling us not once but over and over, ‘when fortune, passes no more!. She kept teling us if we would not do good in school, we would end up porters or hire-per-day laborers. Not that she had some things against these jobs, she was just envisioning a better and more stable future for us. Nanay’s visionary crystal ball saw things differently for us. Instead of sending us down the streets begging for money or asking us to work and earn a daily wage, she sent us to school. She and Tatay had the thickest of skin, armed with courage and readiness to accept rejection as they approached many people to owe and loan money for our school needs. They both did not give up, despite of the humiliations they sometimes endured. And there were times, they got encouraging support and admiration from people who understood and believed in what they were doing.  Doing this was, so we their children would not  share the same experience they have had, their joint strategy  out to break the cycle of poverty!

     It took years before my parents became somewhat emancipated from the entrapment of nothingness. Their hardships and sacrifices somewhat paid off. They may had apparently reaped what they sowed. And for certain, they took pride, and experienced  great joy and  sense of accomplishment, for what they dreamed about us came to fruition. 

     So Nanay, as you leave us now, thank you for everything that you went through and what you did for all of us! You conquered the nothingness which entwined you, and gave it light to make the truth shine that poverty is not a hindrance to success.

   Well done, Nanay, well done! Time for you to get that eternal rest!

A Tribute to My Dearest Mother

This is a re-post of my blog posted on May 10, 2013. I am dedicating this tribute to my dearest Nanay who is currently fighting for her life in the hospital. Whatever will come next, Nanay, you have lived a life that's worth celebrating. You have fought hard enough and have won every battle a long time ago! And for this, we shall be eternally grateful.
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    There is something special and unique in being a mother. It’s all about sacrifice, taking risks, and beating  all odds in bringing a new life. It’s about giving oneself so that others will become whole. And this holds water for both biological and surrogate mothers who carried their babies to term. For motherhood is the ‘essence of a woman’. 

     ‘We owe a lot to our mothers’, this I always  stress to my students when we talk about reproduction in the Anatomy and Physiology class. And the reasons are plenty. It begins with oogenesis or egg cell formation, when oocyte prepares and accumulates a wealth of materials required to support the earliest embryonic developmental events that immediately follow after fertilization.  As such, the energy-producing mitochondria in every cell of our body all came from mom’s egg. And not to mention,  half of our DNA comes from our mom’s, too.

     But there’s a lot more to motherhood than the material legacy mothers bequeathed to their children. There is that emotional and hormonal roller-coaster ride throughout the nine-month journey called pregnancy. Early on, there is that yucky  nauseous feeling which comes with morning sickness as it occurs not only in the mornings but all day long. And there's mood swings, fatigue, headaches, constipation. As the fetus gets bigger, mom tends to suffer from shortness of breath as the baby pushes the diaphragm up and the urge to frequently urinate as the fetus presses  the urinary bladder down to the pelvic floor. And there are more changes associated with later pregnancy which  mothers had to endure: itchiness, stretch marks, muscle cramps, limb varicose and swellings, and pre-eclampsia. I remembered my wife having regular asthma attacks for almost the entire duration of her pregnancy with our first born. 

 

     Then comes the time when the expectant mother faces the ultimate challenge.  Pains, so excruciating,  come and go as labor started. The labor pains become more frequent  and more intense as  labor progresses. I spent sometime inside the delivery room when wife was giving birth to our daughter. I felt so useless when I could do nothing else but watch the wife suffering from recurrent intense pains that come with labor. And then, when necessary, the mom may undergo episiotomy if not a caesarian section  when conditions do not warrant normal baby delivery.

     But all of these seem to fade away the moment the mother sees her child for the first time. She becomes completely oblivious of the discomforts and pains she endured, as she regains her strength and shapes up her tenacity to raise the baby she just gave birth. And so her sacrifices continue.

     Let's celebrate each day as mother's day.  Let's make that special woman in our life feel so special. Hug your mom. Call her. Thank her for all what she did and she went through. For nobody is born without a mother!

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    And for our dear Nanay, should it be time for you to go, do it in peace! For after all those 87 years in your earthly sojourn, it may be time for an eternal rest!