Mothers

Today my mother and I had some quality bonding time. That is, we did the laundry together (the laundrywoman went AWOL) and then we bought ice cream (or I did but it was mama's money) and I ate probably 3/4 of it. We then watched a movie, had dinner, and now she's in bed after warning me not to sleep past midnight.

Most days, she wakes me up before eight to eat breakfast. I've been eating tuna for days now. Then she goes to work and I spend half the morning sleeping. I wake up, go online and cook rice before twelve. My mother goes home for lunch or sometimes leaves me to fend for myself. The first time, I burnt my pork chop. The second time, I was wiser and opened another can of Tuna.

I spend the rest of the afternoon studying/reading novels/watching anime while online and when Mama arrives home late in the afternoon, she orders me to take a bath. Sometimes we go to the market to do the grocery. Other times we just watch the late afternoon news and the late afternoon soaps. We have dinner and she watches more soap operas while I read novels or go online. Then we watch an episode of Secret Garden, a koreanovela, before she goes to bed and I sneak out to go online again. Sometimes she catches me and orders me to bed.

It almost feels like being an only child in a single family with only me and mama in the house.

Needless to say, I love my mother very much.

*

I think I've only seen her once. Or maybe twice. My friend's mom. I don't know a lot about her, except that she loves to play Bingo at the mall and hardly passes up the opportunity to do so and that she has to go through dialysis because her kidneys are failing. And that's why Joshi, one of my dearest friends, is not unfamiliar with the Emergency Room.

A few weeks back, I learned her mother was going through an operation. I didn't even know what kind. I heard it was a success and she was recovering well. But then the next thing I heard was that she passed away.

My other friend, Mary, lost her mom, too. Right in the middle of Hell Week. Unlike Joshi who had been taking care of her mother for years, Mary didn't really get much time. Her mother had gone away on some pretense and came back with Stage IV Breast Cancer. Perhaps she wanted to spare her family the pain. It was Mary, the youngest and only girl, who had the strength to care for her mother during those last few precious days. And yet, we never guessed. She went to school as always. She never complained. Never broke down. Never revealed the suffering she was going through.

And I can't even imagine what they went through... what they're going through. Because I don't want to know what it's like to walk in their shoes. I don't want to know what it's like to lose a mother.