Hero (My Mother: The Change of My Life)
I am back, after 4 epic years of my writing silence. My favorite muse beside music, that I have abandoned so many times throughout my life. It has been my hero in the bottom pits of the deepest moments of my life and of my sweet youth.
My collections of writings: Diaries of a 13yr old, the tumultuous love phases of my youth, my rise from heartbreak after divorce and now the loss of my “unknown” hero. I suffered...we all suffered a tremendous loss of my mother earlier this year. For her friends and people who knew her - she was a gracious woman who kept to herself. Always willing to lend a hand and occasionally sharing a smile. For her family, she was unstoppable - full of determination and ambition unlike no other seen despite her mental ills (the shadow of bipolar.) For her neighbors, a woman who minded her own business but shared a cooked home meal and would offer a set of prayers for you or your loved ones in this busy world where no one stops a second to be in the present moment. For my brother, she was a confidante and her laughter would fill up a room but also alleviate your mind of daily stresses.
But for her daughter, for me - she was my storm of conflictions. From the time I could look up to her - she was a leader who I feared. She never sat me down to speak “our feelings.” She was just a teacher of actions. She worked as a great American seamstress - waking up by 7am to sew children’s wear until the latest of midnights. She made my hate towards her work become my current love (to work in apparel.) She showed me faith - attending to every part of my religious education. As a young adult, my rebellion for teenage freedom sent me on a different path, moving away. She continued on hers, her independence to take care of herself, as she once did.
The years taught me with experience as much as I wanted to ran - I came back “home” to my mother. The later years of my adult life, I just took up this role she often hated. I hated it too - but it was also the undefined purpose for a portion of my life. Life smacked me with lessons and gave me transformation (after my heartbreak). I thought the last 7 years were my gift when really it was a gift of time for both of us. My mother, the leader I once feared, became the “unmentioned” best friend I so ever needed and always had but under appreciated. The pandemic, as she quoted, she never thought she would see in her lifetime - soften the world and brought us closer for one year. The last year of her life, she become - not the once feared leader - but my fearless leader. Giving each day of her life sharing her warm home and dinners with me. Like clockwork praying at 3pm for the world, for her loved ones but not for herself. She was my diary - listening to my stressors, my stories and the very few dreams that I still believe I can accomplish one day. Her ever positive non chalant demeanour - showing me to trust more in this very impermanent life. You will be okay, her daily message.
I thought protecting her for as long as I did - she can survive this too - a pandemic. I lost her and I slowly began to realize she was so much more than a feared leader, my fearless leader but truely my Hero. The stories I heard about her life, that I never knew, made me see that a part of her lives on through me, through us...but I never let her know she was my Hero for all the countless legacies she left behind for us. I just know that my expressive eyes told her the words I left unspoken: that by being her "leader of actions" - she saw her young self: her Hero in me.
~this writing is dedicated to My mother Marinita, & to all consumers & caregivers of their loved ones.