IT’s the day before Mother’s Day 2025, May 11, as I write this, and I’ve just come from the cemetery to lay flowers at the graves of the important women in my life: my grandmother, my great-grandmother, Tita Mecing, and of course, Mama. Like I kidded my flower suki, Shaina, I was beating the Sunday rush, and getting flowers before the prices doubled. “Oo nga, Ma’am!” she said with a laugh. Well, at least she was honest.
The author and her mom in 2018
This year is a little different, however. First, it’s the first Mother’s Day after my Tita Mecing, Mama’s younger sister, passed away last November. She was like a mother to me in many ways—especially when I had to rant to her about my own mother—and I’ve resolved that although I wasn’t able to say a proper goodbye to her, as I wasn’t informed about her cremation, I will keep remembering her, as well.
Second, for the first time, I can say I’ve forgiven my mom after many years of what I perceived as her misunderstanding, distance, and emotional unavailability. I was (and always will be) a Daddy’s girl, and after he died when I had just turned 18, I couldn’t talk to her like I did with my father, who, I felt, appreciated and understood me so much more. He was open-minded, forgiving, and philosophical; she was (to my mind) petty, conscious of what other people said, and hellbent on raising me in her mold, which I vigorously resisted; we honestly couldn’t have been more different. She was aghast that I wanted to learn to scuba-dive, for example, arguing that it wasn’t something girls did (!!!)—so you know what I mean.
When I was diagnosed with depression, she was in denial about it; when I fought breast cancer, she similarly didn’t seem to comprehend how it was that big a deal, even asking me, after a round of chemotherapy that had my head spinning, if I could go out and buy a cake for my aunt.
My sister-in-law Leah says she remembers me asking for forgiveness at Mama’s deathbed, when she died at home of respiratory failure after two months of palliative care, on February 29, 2020; we buried her 10 days before the pandemic lockdown. I don’t quite recall that; all I remember was, over the next five years, the poison of my resentment kept simmering. Any conversations with anyone close to me about mother would find me growing increasingly agitated, even in tears. I knew it wasn’t good when my househelp and also close friend, Yaya Dang, who took care of Mama in her last five years of life, asked me pointblank, “Ma’am, bakit kung si Lola ang pinag-uusapan, galit ka pa rin?”
Yaya Dang, who took care of Mama in her last five years of life, asked me pointblank, ‘Ma’am, bakit kung si Lola ang pinag-uusapan, galit ka pa rin?’
Bakit nga ba. But it was true. So on my last annual “lockdown” at the Cenacle Retreat House in Quezon City (not just an exercise in piety, but a requirement for sanity; how else can you stay completely quiet enough for God to knock some sense into your head?), I decided to confess the issue to a relatively young, insightful Jesuit named Fr. Mamert.
Fr. Mamert was quiet, introspective. After I had basically told him I was having such difficulty forgiving Mama, he asked me: “But have you asked for her forgiveness?”
The gravity of what he was asking me hit me hard, but didn’t take long to sink in. In the five years since her death, I realized I had demonized my mother every chance I got, when she was no longer around to explain, although she had lost the lucidity to do that in her last year or so. I joked about how she never visited me in my dreams, because she knew I was pissed. I even wrote an article about emotionally distant or stunted parents, and although the phenomenon does exist—and I am not saying I was wrong about her—I also slapped label after label on her. Every little mistake of hers in dealing with me over the years was magnified several times over, and Mama simply could not defend herself anymore.
It was, I realized, with the benefit of hindsight and age, up to me to find the reasons. She had grown up spoiled by her father, babied by her husband, and coddled by her eldest son, whom she obviously favored among all her six children. I was fine with that, since I had Daddy—that is, until he passed when I was 18, and I was left completely anchorless, as Mama drowned in her own grief. That could also be explained; she and Daddy had been inseparable for 43 years, so there was probably no room in her own consciousness for how other people coped with the loss.
I think she had neither the emotional nor intellectual capacity to understand things like clinical depression, and my firm belief that self-care took precedence over family obligations. She was simply incapable of objective, philosophical discussions, and every question was an affront to her parenthood. After all, for her generation, depression was not spoken about, and bad feelings were simply sucked up and held inside. Meanwhile, here I was, a poster child for mental illness and oversharing. It must have frightened her no end.
I’m not saying she wasn’t intelligent; maybe that was just how she was and how she was raised, after all. While her father doted on her, her mother was, like her, distant, unsympathetic, and later on in life, prone to self-pity. Mama had a master’s degree in FOMO (fear of missing out), maybe because she had gotten used to always being first priority. Then came her only daughter, who seemed determined not to be like her (and I told her so). In retrospect, that must have hurt.
What changed? I accepted that much of what my mother had become had been unintentional. Like everyone, she grew up with tremendous baggage, even if she didn’t see it. Her father had been a rich hacendero who squandered away his money; unfortunately, she and her older brother had experienced the fruits of that wealth growing up, so suddenly losing it was traumatic. Her materialism later in life, especially after my father’s death, was a reaction to the same trauma all over again.
For my penance, Fr. Mamert didn’t focus on prayers, except a rosary later in the day. Instead, he asked me to sit down, look back on my life, and revisit every joyful moment I spent with my mother. It was an exercise that left me bawling in both guilt and gratitude, because there were many, of course. Although she was never the hugging type—I don’t remember hugs from Mama at all, unlike my strong memory of the wonderful smell of my father when he embraced me, which was very often—Mama did much to ensure I had a wonderful childhood.
So that’s where the author gets her love for dogs.
In Sheffield, England in 1980, when the author was 16
In her later years, when I had become the dominant one, taking care of her, there were lunches and dinners and shows, just the two of us, and a lot of laughter, because she did have a sense of humor. There were trips abroad, touring Europe when I was only 16 to visit my brother at graduate school in Sheffield, England, and spending time with Tita Mecing when the latter still lived in San Francisco, and even traveling together from there to Spain, enjoying the cool weather Mama loved. There was plenty of time spent with her four sisters, who were very much like her (although less spoiled, Tita Mecing hastened to add, albeit good-naturedly), complete with that beautiful hair that turned platinum with age, and those peals of laughter that brought so much joy to reunions.
And of course, despite her being inarticulate, shy, and averse to expressing her feelings, Mama did try to dispense advice when she saw me hurting, although unfortunately, it was often too little and too late. I would learn from Yaya Dang how she refused to sleep when I wasn’t home yet, how food in the house had to be set aside “para kay Alya.”
A memory that surfaced from my reflection was of many years ago, in San Francisco, when we woke up on my birthday. She forgot for the first few minutes, then suddenly exclaimed, “Happy birthday, baba!” (a Bicol expression meaning “dear” or “beloved”). Then, she cupped my face with one hand, still self-conscious and unable to look me in the eye, and said softly, awkwardly, “You just don’t know how much I love you.”
She cupped my face with one hand, still self-conscious and unable to look me in the eye, and said softly, awkwardly, ‘You just don’t know how much I love you’
That, essentially, was Mama: loving and caring, but in ways that were hard to see, because she never learned to do it any other way.
In the late 1980s, when the author was already working
For many years, I had kept a folder in my laptop of pictures of Daddy, but never of Mama. I asked Mama Mary to be the warm substitute mother I felt I never quite had. After my retreat, I quickly filled that folder with pictures of Mama, as well. After that retreat, I drove straight to the cemetery to ask her forgiveness, and promised I would stop trying to forget that she had been a positive part of my life, too.
So that’s what I did today, for the sixth Mother’s Day without Mama. I passed by my grandmother and great-grandmother to say hello. I thanked Tita Mecing for her patience. And I finally got to tell Mama, with no qualms, that I love her. I still do remember some of the pain at times, but I now truly understand that people do things that hurt the people they love, even if not all of it is intentional—as I’m sure I had broken Mama’s heart many, many times.
The author’s mother Alice (center) at her last birthday, November 2019, with sisters Nena (seated left) and Mecing, who passed away in November 2024
And I also know Mama Mary is smiling somewhere, glad that I have made peace with my earthly mother—just as I’m sure she had a lot to do with it.
Happy Mother’s Day, Mama. I love you always.
