Nanay

I was looking out the window today when I saw a lady fixing her cart attached to a motorcycle. She was tying her boxes and had them secured before driving her way to town to sell her wares. She must have been 65 or 66.  The sight of her laboring at such a fragile age easily tore my heart apart. Her slouched, thin frame and her face, sparsely covered with flesh revealing visible outlines of her skull, instinctively reminded me of my mother. She was about the same age when my nanay passed away.

Since I was young, I pretty much knew that I had a strong resemblance to my mother. Aunts and uncles would constantly remind me of this fact. It wasn’t until I saw pictures of her in her early twenties that I fully believed them. It was like looking into a mirror.

She was a 36-year old Anesthesiologist when she met my dad. Severely traumatized from a failed relationship, she nearly gave up on the prospect of ever settling down. But after a year of dating, she handed out an ultimatum to my dad telling him that if he wasn’t going to marry her within the year, he could forget about the possibility of ever marrying her.

So that’s when it all began. After successfully delivering a girl and a boy, they weren’t really counting on having another one. Especially at the age of 40, a year short of her menopause. The Lord obviously had other plans because here I am now, narrating this story which is deeply embedded in me.

My nanay was a fighter.  She painfully carried herself and us through a devastating time over the loss of our father at such untimely age. And she struggled with every bit for her life, too. She had overcome tuberculosis twice.  Successfully fended off cancer but lost one of her breasts in the fight. She even made it through a serious spine injury which left her slumped for the remainder of her life.

But it was with Diabetes that she eventually conceded to. It destroyed her kidneys, not leaving much of them to function effectively. She was in dire need of another one. But she didn’t surrender right away. She stretched her life for another 3 years living on a dialysis machine, which left the family financially depleted.

Those last three years were the hardest in my life. I saw her life fade before my very eyes each passing day. I knew then she wasn’t going to win this battle. The mirror that I’ve always seen in her face gradually eroded as her face shrunk and darkened considerably due of the treatments. I still vividly recall the details of her frail, thin arms, awfully bruised from the large needles that connected her to the dialysis machine. The thin, bony hands I used to hold from time to time to re-assure her that everything was going to be all right.

But who was I kidding. She knew exactly what was coming. And she readied herself for it. Right before she died, she knew that things weren’t well between me and my brother. It almost seemed unthinkable for us to stay in one room without going into a fight. Looking after her in the hospital also meant spending time with my brother. It was during those times that our issues with each other unfolded and with the workings of fate,  got resolved. We began to understand each other more. Strangely, her impending time had brought my brother and I closer. 

In retrospect, the most significant transformation was really the one that emerged deep within me. While I was braving my very own battles, her memory provided me the strength to keep on going. When I was on the brink of giving up, it was her face I saw, no longer wrinkled and tired. And I would pick myself up again.

This was the same woman who had fallen prey to her weaknesses and struggled most of her life with an addiction to gambling. This affliction became a nagging source of conflicts in the family. Not only did it place the family finances in a woeful state, it also deprived us of the time with her. 

I admit, she was not at all perfect. She was just every bit human as we all are. Yet, I couldn’t have wished for a better mother. I know I’ve had the best nanay one could ever hope for. Her goodness clearly overshadowed all her shortcomings. For even when she was already bed-ridden and attached to an oxygen machine, she continued to make a difference in other people’s lives. I'm sure this is how she will always be remembered.

Now in my early thirties, I see so much of her in me. I've become a fighter, too. Refusing to  back off from life without a fight. That much I've inherited from her.

The mirror has never been clearer.