Celebrating Mother’s Day Without A Mom
Holidays are never the same, especially that one day in May.
I lost my mom when I was 8. I remember waking up to the shrill ringing of the black rotary phone at dawn — my sisters and me under the care of an aunt — with my dad having rushed my mom to the ER the night before. The instruction was to get up immediately and go to the hospital. My mom was “50-50.”
In ironic dainty dresses haphazardly chosen in the dark of the morning rush, my older sister (then 10) and I met our dad in the corridor. I could tell he had already been crying. He went down on one knee to meet our eyes and told us, broken: “Wala na ang mama niyo…” My world shattered. My childhood ended. We cried along with him.
My mom was only 30.
Back home, our two-month-old baby sister also had her life altered drastically, unknowingly — the warmth of the arms that cradled her and danced her around to music and giggles were suddenly gone forever.
Bleak holidays
The first Christmas without her was particularly hard. I remember being in my lola’s Bel-Air house with my mom’s side of the family — my dad elsewhere and my baby sister with some other relatives — and everyone appeared to be jolly. The tree was up. There were many gifts under it. There was a massive feast on several tables and the drinks flowed. It seemed as though I was the only one who was feeling sad and empty. Or have the adults gotten so good at hiding their pain?
It was the first of many holidays I would silently dread. Every occasion was just another attempt to pretend to be all right. Even mundane activities such as report card distribution at school, parent-teacher conferences, and viewing sappy TV commercials depicting happy, complete families were enough to reopen the wound and get it bleeding all over again.
In lower-level grade school we would be tasked to create homemade greeting cards, and I’d remember feeling lost just before I start. In school events, moms and daughters would bond over the preparations — I’d just turn a blind eye.
Mother’s Day was the coup de grace. Every, single, year. Everywhere you look, everyone is singing praises, everyone is giving gifts, everyone is honoring their moms. I did not feel bitter — I still participated in the revelry and greeted every mom I knew and all who stood as moms for their charges. It just never felt complete not being able to greet my own.
The most important holiday became All Souls’ Day. Until today, I still think that no child should ever be so overly aware of November 1 apart from the vacation factor. But that was the card that I was dealt. It was the hand that we all had to play.
Parenting with a broken wing
Of course, not all of the years that led me here have been arduous. It may have taken a few years for everyone to adjust, but there have been a lot of good moments, too. It’s just that every time a happy moment pops up, I’d almost always find my laughter trailing to a slow halt and in the back of my mind, I’d wish my mom had been there to see it all unfold.
My son was born around Christmastime, 2005. I still believe that this was intended by the universe to help me once and for all change the way I felt about ‘the most wonderful time of the year.’ For the first time in a long while, December became a month not to dread but to actually look forward to — again. For the first time in many years, the chill in the air brought me delight, and the lights did not accentuate the depths of the darkness I felt for so long. Christmas was Christmas once again. My baby looked back at me with eyes that only knew joy.
It was fortuitous that during my son’s formative years, I was working as an editor for a parenting magazine, which meant I had first-hand information on proper childrearing. I also had peers at work to share the journey with. But I knew that no one would beat the advice I would have gotten from my mom if she were still around. Parenting books can teach you about the technical aspect, but no one can quite make you whole like a lola’s love.
I deliberately give my child the very thing I did not get from my mom: time. I had a full-time job (and still do) but I never miss a milestone. First steps — I saw them. His first word: “mah.” I chaperoned him on his dates with the first girlfriend (uncool, I know!). Maybe someday he would have misgivings about me, but what he could never say is that I was never there for him. He’s 15 now and keeps to himself most of the time, but every now and then when he’s particularly stressed, he comes up and stays for a while to cuddle. I might be parenting him with a broken wing, but sometimes, it occurs to me: I must be doing something right.
Alive in me
They say time heals all wounds but I say that’s a load of bull. Thirty-five years later, the pain of losing my mom has not gone away. Over time I developed the tools to help me cope, but there is no getting over the death of a mother, and definitely not when you lose her at a time when your world revolves exclusively around her.
There are times when I would hear fellow adults whine about how irritated they are over their moms and how they fight over the most trivial of things. I would just smile. I get them and I sympathize with them, but there is this part of me that wishes I still had a mom to bicker with in the first place.
Because all this time, heaven knows what I would have given to have someone nag me to clean my room, wash the dishes, to stop sleeping so late or acting so shy around well-meaning relatives.
Because then it would also mean that I would see her face in the crowd for every award received, for every performance on stage. It means I would get to hold her hand while walking to school, or as I lay sick in a hospital bed. It means I would have her shoulder to cry on for every heartbreak from every prick. It means we would have her in the same room beaming with pride at every grandchild’s precious antics.
Sometimes it gives me strength to think that a part of her is still alive within me. I have her brains, I have her grace, I have her grit. And if she lives inside of me then I will try my darnedest to keep her around for as long as I can. She will always be the warmth behind my tender loving side, and the force behind the spunk that sometimes erupts in my own voice. She will always be in the random yellow blooms that brighten up my day, and in the old songs that I will often choose to play.
Nikki is an erstwhile magazine editor who is now working as a communications practitioner on the corporate side. She works on healing her abandonment issues during her free time.
