To my Mother on her 80th Birthday
Before I forget… (warning: long post NOVEL ALERT!! Read at your own risk! 🤣)
Happy 80th birthday to my Inang, the strongest person I know. I am who I am because of her and am fiercely protective of her. Many say I’m her carbon copy LOL.
My mom raised 8 children plus 2 who passed in infancy, so birthed 10! She is very self abnegating and would give you the shirt off her back. She keeps nothing for herself and my dad would always have to remind her that she doesn’t have to give so much of herself to matter or help. My mom shows her love by giving.
I’ve inherited that from her too. It’s been a process for me to learn that giving too much of oneself can lead to an endless cycle of co-dependence.
She taught me to sew, cook and be the perfect housewife and mom. She instilled in me an unshakable moral compass and a standard of behavior that some people tell me is hard to live up to. She taught me that integrity and hope are one’s most valuable resources and that forgiveness is one of the best gifts you can bestow.
My inner dialogue is her voice LOL and when I find myself with a dilemma, it’s my reasoning but her voice I hear in the background. Her face, who is also mine is who I see in the mirror when I’m faced with life’s most basic and complex situations. I can’t stand her judgement sometimes lol
Although spirituality strong, my mom has been plagued with ailments ever since I could remember. I remember her getting an appendectomy in the 5th grade, valley fever in jr high, TB and diabetes in high school and the most critical hit was in 2002 when she was diagnosed with aggressive bilateral metastatic breast cancer. The cancer started in her right breast, she got chemo for that, then it went to her left breast and she got radiation and chemo for that. I remember taking her to all her appointments, every last surgery, and every hours-long chemo session. I remember having to sit from 8am til the end of the day for her infusions. Often times we’d be the last ones in the hospital to leave. I remember cramming for final exams, and creating senior projects while I sat waiting for her to get out of surgery. I remember the endless oncology, radiology, PET scans, MRIs and countless other scans that made her radioactive. There were times when my son was a toddler that I’d have to stagger their time with one another so that my mom was not near him at the times the radioactive contrast was still in her body.
Not many people know the managerial skill it has taken to oversee the care of my mother. Although I have single handedly carried it on my shoulders for years, I got really lucky in having nieces and nephews that have helped me with her care especially when I was a new mom. I owe so much to those kids and in many ways that’s why they seem to be more like my brothers and sisters than my own siblings. My siblings helped when they could, but everyone was so busy working to make ends meet, that I took on most of the responsibility because I was the youngest and single with no family or obligations of my own.
Throughout her treatments, my mom has been a trooper. She has never complained or got depressed or let her illness overcome her fighting spirit. She lives her life simply, keeps her material needs to a minimum and faces each day with almost a delusional optimism that I have come to know has been the secret of her life. Oh and she still smokes her dainty premium cigarettes. 🤣 When asked multiple times from several oncologists, surgeons, and doctors, what my mother’s secret is, I tell them: bagoong (fish sauce), dried fish, pork, delusional optimism, and at least pack of premium cigarettes a week. 😂😂 So many people are intrigued at how far she’s come.
My mom doesn’t take life too seriously. She was raised devout Catholic but grew up questioning her religion and by the time she had me, she taught me that God is everywhere. Communion and prayer is focused in His house, but can occur anywhere a person is. Prayer occurs 1:1 between him and an individual. Her faith in her Maker is also why she has been and continues to live the life she does.
She loves to cook and she knows the foods that can comfort and heal her but she practices a lot of restraint and is self regulating. She knows which herbs to add to her diet, what leaves to boil to make tea, and what to incorporate to not only make her food taste good but can also help her health. I remember making bittermelon and moringa tea for her, buying fresh cranberries she can eat. She knows her body well and for the most part she’s not so readily accepting of medications if she notices side affects.
My mom loves to smile and laugh and she looooves kids and people in general. In a lot of ways she reminds me of a child with awe and wonder in her eyes when she experiences things, objects, people, ideas and concepts. There’s a childlike quality about her and an innocence that I have always guarded because it’s one of the best, most endearing things about her. She laughs out loud with genuine feeling and experiences life using the slightest touch of her fingertips.
My mom is grace, style and etiquette rolled up in cozy house slippers, a warm robe and homemade fleece pants. LOL 😂 Comfort first, and then style as long as the occasion calls for it. She taught me that the purse should match the shoes and coordinate well with the outfit. She loves classic style and loves seeing people dressed up. I used to make sure to show her my outfits when I’d dress up because I knew she enjoyed looking at a mirror as she vicariously lives through me. She will tell me a dress makes me look fat and that I look best with shorts or pants on. 😂🤣 I love to wear summer dresses, but according to her, after a certain length, it pulls me too low to the ground and I look too heavy. Hehe She has very modest taste and one time she surprised me when she suggested maybe I should show some cleavage because that’s what’s in and the women on the Filipino channel can get away with it and look good. 😂😅🤣 I know in her hay day, she was probably the picture of elegance and that’s why my dad chose her. 🙂 My mom always told me her family thought my dad was uncultured and a brute with no manners lol so my mom had a lot to work on and mediate.
I could go on (novel length, no joke 😁) about this woman I call Inang. She is my epitome of goodness and the measure against which I compare myself. To be all of her and then some has become my way of showing my gratitude to her for being my mom. I know when I exhibit the traits I got from my dad, it keeps her on her toes too. (I will have to tell their love story another time. 🙂 )
Today on her 80th birthday, I hope she knows just how much she means to me, and how grateful I am that she’s my mom. I hope that she knows how much I respect her lessons. How happy I am that she has been able to watch my own son grow into a mirror of myself and thus of her. 😊
My only regret would be that I didn’t have a daughter that she could see me dress up, sew for etc. and a man by my side that can take care of me. I think she will keep praying for a good man because I’m really a handful. Lol
Recently I’ve noticed a decline in her cognition, a delay in her reaction time etc. Shes now hard of hearing and I feel we’re all going to need to have a talk about how to go forward in the near future. A convalescent is out of the question, because I feel she should be near family the most. At the end of her life she’d like to be in the Philippines surrounded by her family because as she put it, she doesn’t want to be a burden on us here since end of life expenses are crazy. She’d genuinely prefer to be laid alongside my dad whose buried in the Philippines. She’s expressed desire to want to be able to go back and forth from the Philippines to the US as long as she is able, because she’s worried about my brother Ben who is epileptic, illiterate and now is unable to work. She’s asked me to take care of him in case she can’t so ideally I see them going together. I’m still trying to work out the details, but I can see that I need a lot more resources and savings to pull that off. Luckily I have siblings to help. The fact that most of them have “vacation” homes in the Philippines is convenient too and I can utilize those. 😊 There’s 8 of us that can pool resources so it shouldn’t be a problem to give my mother what she wants. I’m just going to have to finesse it all so my siblings understand how everything can fit 😁
I hope that as she reflects on her past 80 years she feels a sense of accomplishment; because she has raised good children, a good daughter, awesome grandkids that protect and keep her and an extended family and network of friends that pray for her each day.
May she always know I will always be by her side, even when I can’t be because I will delegate to someone else to make sure she’s taken care of. May she know that the times my temper is a little short now, it’s because I’m learning to forge a life of my own apart from her because I now have a son to raise. May she know that every decision I make for myself includes her somehow. May she know that I’ve done and continue to do my best because I’m so grateful that she was the one that raised me, and that out of all the souls in the universe, God gave her to me and me to her.
May she know that when I stand at the mountain of the end of my life and tell God what I learned on earth, I’d stand confidently as her mirror image to show Him I’ve aced my test of gratitude… the parent of all virtues. And may she know that if I were allowed to come back to take care of her in her next lifetime and the ones after, I would do it so willingly because I know she’d do the same for me.
