Two Years

Mama died of lung ailment on July 13, 2010. It’s been two years since she left. For two hard and long years, we have been suffering from her lost. For two hard and long years, we have been longing for her to come back home. Those two hard and long years, we know will run and last. 

Every morning, I would see her crouching by the laundry area, washing clothes with her willowed hands and long-nailed fingers. Oh, those nails — she loves them so much! She managed to maintain her candle-like fingernails even if she used to do laundry for other people when she was younger. There were times I would jest to cut her nails when she sleeps but she would warn me off in haste. 

I went home from school one day bursting in tears because I got a failing grade in Mathematics. Having consistent high grades, I was so afraid it would upset her but she just smiled and told me, there’s nothing for me to fret about and I cannot force myself to like Mathematics, if I really don’t. 

Never in any talks that she would engage with her friends or our neighbors would she fail to mention me or my academic performance. She’s always been that proud mother but in her most sincere and modest way. When I was in high school and morning shift, she wouldn’t have lunch until I get home, same way that when I am out somewhere, she would not sleep until I had arrived.  

She would literally watch over me whenever I spend nights reviewing for school. She would stay up as late as she could just to see me work. When she couldn’t stand it any longer, she would make me coffee first before she goes to bed.  She taught me how to cook and played with me with vegetable bits while cooking Pinakbet.    

She sacrificed so much for me, for our family—sacrifices that no word is grand enough to describe nor any anecdote could ever tell.   

Says in the movie Blade Runner “the light that burns twice as bright burns for half as long…”, this is probably why she’s now in Heaven.  She had shined very brightly, so brightly that the Gods envied me, and took her back to light his paradise in Heaven. The light she shed to me, to our family, will glimmer through and will remain up until the darkest hour when we feel that losing her had took our every reason to live.           

There will be more two years like this, two years that will be longer and harder than this. Two years that will last up to the end our lives.   

Today is July 13, a day which I never thought should be remembered—the day she left and went to see God in Heaven. 

I miss you Ma. We all do.  

“Whom the Gods love, die young.”