A tribute to my mother

I could not understand why I was so nervous about Dec. 6. Angel Espiritu, the other Enderun professor of Entrepreneurship, and I had long decided to bring our classes down to Lily Pad for lunch on that day. There was nothing unusual about that but I was nervous nevertheless. We arrived. I took the students on a house tour. We had our appetizers and lunch was served when suddenly my cell phone rang. I saw it was Dr. Rosa Carpio, the owner of my mother’s Alzheimer home calling. Didn’t mean anything really. She had called enough times in the past.

Barbara, I have bad news for you, she said. Your mother has had cardiac arrest. Her heart stopped and she stopped breathing. My husband is now taking her to the hospital.

What do you mean? I think I asked. You mean she’s dead?

Yes, I think so, she said. Her heart just stopped.

I looked out at the fish in my pond, the lovely lotus blooms and noticed that the Chinese lotus was not blooming now. I just looked around and thought, “What am I supposed to do now? My mother is. . . dead?” I wondered and wondered, that statement running around in my head like a child’s merry-go-round, going around and up and down. Then suddenly I got a thought. I’d better call my children.

I don’t know whom I called first. Maybe Panjee, who was not answering her cell phone, so I called Gino. He answered then asked that I pick him up in his house in Alabang on my way back. Since Panjee was not answering, I sent her a text. Dr. Carpio called again to say my mother was in V. Luna with her favorite nurse, Jessie, keeping her company. Now I knew which hospital to head for.

I called Angel outside and told him that my mother had just died and I had to rush back. Could he just keep everyone company and I would get in touch with him later? Then I went rushing out, even my driver had not yet eaten lunch.

Maybe in time I will remember clearly what happened that Sunday. My Mommy just seemed to step out of her body and crossed over in an instant and the whole world changed. I know we all ran around then had dinner and went home, my mother was left at the Funeraria Nacional and arrangements were made for her cremation the next day.

On Monday, Dec. 7, we all met at the Heritage crematorium for a Mass at 12:30 pm. We were fewer than 20, my family and I, my first cousins who cared, Baby, Mommy’s and my masseuse. When the coffin came in I decided to check to see how my mother looked. She was amazingly beautiful. I was surprised because I had grown accustomed to seeing her in her Alzheimer state and out of respect for her vanity was going to keep her coffin closed, but now she looked breathtakingly beautiful. Let’s keep her coffin open, I said. She looks so beautiful.

Her first cousin, Marita Banaag Laurel, passed away the previous Saturday, Nov. 28. I could not go to her wake or her burial in San Pablo but I kept praying to her. Please, Tita, pick up my mother and take her with you, I repeated every day. I know my children were also praying for the same thing because Mommy was in Level 7 of Alzheimer’s Disease. She could not talk clearly any more, could not recognize anyone including me, and was angry all the time. I guess Tita Marita heard our prayers and came for her. I thank her deeply.

So allow me to pay tribute to my mother, the only parent I knew, the one I loved fully. She was a gorgeous woman who lived a full dynamic life until Alzheimer’s Disease got the better of her. This is a photograph of her taken when she was 34 years old, at the peak of her beauty, maybe even at the height of a mid-life crisis. She was married twice. The first time to my father, Vladimir Gonzalez, who was killed by the Japanese at the end of the Second World War. She waited 20 years then married Maxwell Donovan when she was 42.

I think Mommy waited for her 88th birthday last Dec. 1, knowing that eight is a lucky number for me. So she decided to cross over when she turned 88, leaving me with a lot of luck, which I will need to try and rebuild my life.

There will be a memorial service for her on her ninth day, Dec. 15, at 3 p.m. I hope at the Forbes Park chapels but I am not yet sure as of this writing. Until then, Mommy stays with me, her cremains in a marble urn on my terrace where I have decorated a table to make her more comfortable.

Goodbye, my beloved mother. I love you and I am certain you will have a lot of laughter in your new world. Thank you for the time you gave me and especially the time you gave my children and their children. We all love you. We all will miss you.