It was my mother’s funeral, barely two months have passed. The sunrays peeping through the church’s windowpanes were growing dim as if slowly pilfered by a light rainfall outside. The alternating mood of the weather had made up a gloomy morning, perhaps to get attuned with the hours of grief.
Inside the old church had breathed the humidity of the surrounds which hastened my unpleasant perspiration. I had to come up on the podium to pay a final tribute to my mother during the memorial rites. On the pulpit’s panel, I tightly pressed down my arms, trembling, while my lips felt mum as I was groping for words to say for a mother of myriad memories.
“My Nanay is a mother for a reason, for all seasons”, I uttered in a quivered voice while tears trickled down my face. While I summoned up the memoirs of her motherhood, my commanding voice was able to sustain silence in the multitude.
“She is a mother for a reason”, I spoke to the crowd. She was widowed after a five-year marriage with three children being orphaned with her. She had to brave all life’s storms if only to raise us to become what she aspired us to be. She relied solely on her meager salary as a public school teacher to be able to sustain our basic needs.
I remember eighteen years ago, while we were all still in college, she suffered from a very serious illness the doctors could hardly diagnose although a year after, she was able to recover miraculously after arduous prayers. Through the years after, I saw her grinning everytime we march on the aisle to get hold of a college diploma. Surely, she survived such near-death illness and other trials for a destined purpose.
Few months ago, when she was diagnosed with malignant cancer in her lungs down to her spine, not a single teardrop dripped from her eyes implying perhaps that there was nothing more she longed for in life. As her favorite verse said, “The Lord is my shepherd, there is nothing more I shall want”. Thus, in her final days, I saw her countenance feeling fulfilled with motherly obligations.
Mothers exist for reasons, not only to have our first cry unleashed to a new world, not even for freeing themselves from birth pains but to be always available for us, at all times, in all climes, no matter how much pain it may bring. For pain may not be hurting anymore if by her tender care, mother would find inner joy. After all, when a mother bear a child, she is endowed with a gift of joy through the facility of pain.
“My Nanay is a mother for all seasons”, I continued as I recounted how she assumed the role of a father as well. It means she had drawn so much amount of strength and firmness to be able to surpass the tests of single parenthood. She gained a certain degree of intuition in drawing the line between affection and discipline; between inspiration and compulsion.
I further revealed that that there was a season that she became my first teacher, both literally and figuratively, who taught me the first alphabets and the ABC of life – among them, the virtues of perseverance, humility and sacrifices.
There was a season that she served as an elected public servant after retiring from three-decade teaching vocation, a windfall of being in service for others. There was also a season of being a leader in different civic and religious organizations. She was a mother for others, too, so to speak.
A season that she became a mother-sister to her two brothers when they were orphaned by an early death of their mother; a season of being a mother to her younger siblings by her father’s subsequent marriage; and a season of being a second mother to her nephews and nieces in various aspects of their lives.
Motherhood encompasses all phases of growth along the years of intermittent paternal passivity, either with fathers’ presence or long absence. For selfless mothers never set boundaries in their passion to love, a zealousness of heart which goes beyond horizon.
Motherhood is an unwavering bestowal of oneself for others without prospect of any return, much less counting of any cost. It is an act of outpouring generosity of love, a priceless legacy to our generation so that we may be able to share its mystical grace to the next in line. A virtue of motherhood abounds in no time, even to eternity.
A mother for a reason is she who knows the opportune time. In the morning of the day she joined her Creator, she received a Communion and was anointed with oil. In the evening, while she was gasping for life on her deathbed, the whole family enfolded her in warm embrace. We had uttered prayers, recited the rosary and read her favorite Psalms.
After the last prayer uttered, she puffed out his final breath. It was a day of Easter, a right and ripe time to go along with her Creator on the very day of resurrection. For me, the time of her death was a sweetest crossover to another dwelling place beyond. Thus, I called her a mother of good timing.
There is a reason for a mother of all seasons. Indeed, for all of us, motherhood is a peaceful journey towards eternal joy.
Happy mother’s day!!!
