My Mom and Independence Day

Roses from Mom

Twenty-three years ago, June 12, 1987, was the celebration of Philippine Independence. It was also mom’s release from her bondage at 63 years old. I wasn’t around. I was taking up a course in Program for Development Managers at the Asian Institute of Management (AIM) in Makati City. But I expected her death. She was bedridden since her fatal stroke in 1980, during the 7th birthday anniversary of my eldest daughter. She was overwhelmed with joy; her heart couldn’t take the excitement.

I felt mom had suffered enough after seven years of being bedridden. Her death was freedom from the physical pain caused by the atrophy of the left side of her body, aside from the rushes and bedsores. More importantly, mom was freed from the emotional pain of being a paraplegic. It must have been very difficult for her not to be able to express what she felt. After seven years, people around her took things for granted. Mom was reduced to a person with physical needs. At times we forgot that she was a human being who needed the human touch.

When I was at AIM, I asked one favor from God: “let her passing through be smooth, so that the burden would be light for her and for everyone - dad, Kuya Rudy, my family.” My request was granted. She died on a Saturday, I was up in Baguio on a Sunday and she was buried the following day. After the burial, I was on the road back to Makati, which was a five-hour ride.

When I arrived at AIM, there was a class party, which started Monday evening, and I was caught in the merriment. I recalled that in the midst of the celebration, I talked to Father Monsi, one of two priests among my classmates. I didn’t have time to mourn; I simply had to share mom’s death with someone. I don’t remember what Fr. Monsi advised. But I felt relieved and joined the merrymaking, which lasted until 3:00 am.

As I was going to my room, after the party, it hit me: “here I was, enjoying the time of my life, when just the day before, I was attending the burial of mom.” How could I be so callous as to take mom’s death for granted? I did not respect the rite of passage; I was supposed to be in mourning. I had my fears for the night, like the devil would just show up and take me to the gallows (although it was already wee past midnight).

While in my room, I carried those morbid thoughts to bed, as I fell asleep. It was then that I had a most wonderful dream. All of my room was surrounded with red roses. The vases, the table, by the lampshade, on every corner and even on the floor around my bed were filled with roses. Then I smelled the rose fragrance and felt mom’s presence. Somewhere in my mind, I felt her voice speaking in Pilipino: “Its okay my son; I understand. I’m in a place that comforts me.” Thereafter, I felt so much love and understanding. Mom’s name, of course was Rose.

Mom’s Story

Rosario, mom, was a “Cebuana” from the obscure town of San Fernando in Cebu island-province. To reach the place, one needed an hour plane ride or an overnight boat ride from Manila to Cebu City. From Cebu City to San Fernando, one would take a four-hour ride. From the San Fernando town proper to mom’s village, was another painstaking “habal-habal,” a motorbike with a wooden plank to accommodate around five people and balanced by the driver. This meant that up to this time and age (2004), the place is still remote, with no electricity. I suppose during mom’s time it meant a day’s hike from her village to the poblacion.

Ferdinand Magellan, from the viewpoint of western inspired world history, first landed in Sugbu (Cebu) when he “discovered” the Philippines in 1521. There, he led the systematic conversion of the friendly Sugbu-anons under Rajah Humabon to Christianity. Nonetheless, Lapu-Lapu, from a village in Mactan, Cebu, had the distinction of causing Magellan’s death; the blood of the foreigner dripped in Philippine soil. Lapu-Lapu was a Bangingi warrior who refused homage to a colonizer, a Filipino tradition before colonization.

What happened to mom in her earlier years? According to stories, mom, who was known as Rosing, was a natural entrepreneur even when she did not read and write. She would take the cow, pitched it to the plow and till the soil. Afterwards, she would bake and sell suman (rice-cakes wrapped in banana leaves). She would share her little earning with family. She was the eldest of a brood of 10 and she was the tough breadwinner.

When she was 17 years old, mom was already married, with two kids. During the Japanese occupation, mom watched all members of her family brutally killed. She was spared only because her family members shielded her from the bullets and fell dead on top of her already fallen body; she was mistaken for dead. After that traumatic war episode, mom married again and bore two daughters and stayed on in San Fernando. Then, in 1949, when she was 25, she decided she had enough of rural life and sought her fortune in Manila’s urban life, along with two younger siblings, both boys. She left behind her second husband and two daughters, her parents and the rest of her siblings. Somewhere along the way, one of her siblings, an uncle got lost and was never found.

Soon after mom and uncle Balbino arrived in Manila, they stayed together for a time. Eventually, uncle Balbino married and settled in Tondo, Manila, where the family lived as squatters, together with the scum of the city. Tondo then, was the battleground of two notorious gangs – the Sigue-Sigue Gang and the Sputnik Gang, two rival groups from the Visayas, organized to take care of their own against the harsh city jungle. Such was the Manila life mom had to go through with uncle Balbino.

Back in the 1960s, my brother and I had had our share of Tondo life, when we spend vacation in our uncle’s place. Cousin Boy would guide us through the labyrinths of Rivera St., Tutuban (the railroad station), Divisoria, Sta Cruz, Avenida, Recto and Ongpin Sts. I did not know it then, but cousin Boy was a “lagarista,” an errant boy who makes the rounds of movie houses to deliver movie films. I would tag along with my brother and cousin (both older by three years). At that time, I was an innocent child in my pre-teens enjoying free movies, unknowingly watching grown-ups ply their trade of flesh, deceit and fake diplomas.

Uncle Balbino and his family had a new lease in life, when they became recipients of a housing program of government. They acquired land and house in Sapang Palay, San Jose del Monte in the province of Bulacan, which was an hour drive north of Manila. My uncle was a good mechanic, which was his source of livelihood. My cousins, the boys grew up as mechanics too. The girls, like mom, became efficient caregivers.

A Homecoming

In 1981, my brother, Kuya Rudy and his family migrated to California. After 15 years, in 1996, an ethnic conflict between Chicano and Filipino youth erupted in his place. To avoid “the heat,” my brother sent his youngest son to stay in Baguio. Then, we agreed to sustain the schooling of relatives as a tribute to mom. My nephew stayed at home with my children, together with my half-sister’s (Ate Shirley) daughter, my other half-sister’s (Ate Paring) son and cousin Boy’s daughter. (Kuya Rudy’s son called me “uncle” with an American twang; my sisters’ kids called me “angkol,” with a Cebuano accent; my cousin’s daughter called me “angkel,” typical of Bulacan’s Tagalog.)

After six months, my nephew went back to the US with a tattoo on his chest: “I am a Filipino.” (Ironically, he joined the US Navy and was among those who “liberated” Iraq in 2003. Iraq was ancient Mesopotamia, where the Sumerians, the oldest known civilization, took root 6,000 years ago.) My other nephew and nieces also went to their hometowns. Like my kids, they now have their families; Filipinos linked with the world.

In 2000, my brother made a sentimental journey to mom’s remote hometown in San Fernando, Cebu. His written recollection was nostalgia enshrouded with redolence. In mom’s town, life seemed to be at a standstill – houses made of bamboo and cogon grass, and crude farming. Our relatives, including my half sisters and their families, struggled for their daily meals. My brother stayed in a tattered “barong-barong” (hut), which was some 20 square meters of kitchen, bedroom and living room enclosed by bamboo and grass. Mom lived in this hut since 1929, her birth, until she was 24 years old. After more than eighty years, the house still stood, although left un-kept.

Deep in the night, my brother laid in a bamboo bed, with only a rice sack as bed sheet. In the candlelight that flickered in the dark, he lingered on the shadows: “Mom left more than fifty years ago because there was no future here for one who craves for a better life.” Mom left the rut to seek her fortune. She never returned to her hometown or her village life. Paradoxically, she left the place where colonization first began in 1521.

Mom never learned to read and write. I recall that during election time, she would practice writing and copying the names of candidates she would vote. At the polls, she would take an hour to vote what normally would take fifteen minutes. Mom and dad (who did not finished college), like many during their time and the people who lived in squatter areas, had to struggle. They belonged to the nameless faces called “poor.” Unfortunately for them, their plight had been obscured by centuries of colonization.

Legacy of Humanity

As the Philippines celebrate its 112th Independence Day from the Spanish colonizers, I can’t help but surmise about the true meaning of freedom.

Here’s an insight from The 3rd Patriarch of Zen, entitled Trust in the Heart: “When we return to the roots, we gain meaning. When we pursue external objects, we lose reason. When the deep mystery of one suchness is fathomed, suddenly we forget the external entanglements. When the 10,000 things are viewed in their oneness, we return to the origin and remain where we have always been.”

Beyond culture and my biological DNA lies a deeper part of me, the one that connects with all life and a silent intelligence. Apparently, a “field of organization” determines the direction of life. For a larva, this “field of organization” determines the structure of its body and the functions of its organs, causes the constriction during the pupa stage, and, eventually disappears. It leaves behind a disorganized mass of living cells, with no apparent purpose. Then, a miracle happens. A field of organization of a new type expands from a particular point in the mass of cells, directing the manifestation of a particular blueprint in flesh and blood. The final result is the complex body of a butterfly.

I think that a human being has its own “field of organization” like that of a butterfly. Beyond the cultural patterns from mom and dad, my DNA patterns must have been my line to a deeper intelligence and the one that had guided my destiny. Although coursed through mom and dad’s DNA patterns, my DNA blueprint was not only biological; it was a “field of organization” that attracted the appropriate conditions for my gradual development. And my nerve cells seem to be the link that connected my physical brain with the world in which consciousness is rooted.

I guess I owe it to my genes for growing up the way I am. Otherwise, I would have ended up as a scavenger and scum, like other migrants from the provinces to the big city (I have to apologize to them for the comparison, for they too are humans, with their own dreams).

Fortunately for kuya and me, mom and dad pursued a vision for a brighter future for us, all the way to Baguio City. Through education, they nurtured our growing consciousness of the social, political and economic realities of our times. This was why, I suppose, kuya and I, despite different paths, had our hearts crying out for the poor. The Filipino was rich as a people; most simply forgot that birthright. Mom and dad were deprived, but enabled us to remember. They came out of the rut and left a legacy for prosperity. They linked us back to our colorful heritage.

Thank you mom, for the roses; your independence from earth life was also my key to freedom!