In Praise of Mothers

by EMMANUEL R. FERNANDEZ*


An old woman once sent a rather strange letter of invitation to her children. It said, “Please know that, through this letter, I am giving you the permission to skip my wake, be absent from my funeral, and forget all about me after I’m buried. But I’m organizing a party with my old friends two weeks from now, and it’s one party I don’t want you to miss. Please be there… by all means.”

Two weeks later, all her children went to the venue she indicated in her letter of invitation. It was an old chapel that had seen better days. Seated together inside the chapel were their mother and six of her old friends. There was an open coffin in front of the altar and a microphone stand a few steps away. Upon seeing them, their mother stood up, walked to the microphone stand and said: “I have no idea when I’m going to be lying there inside that coffin. It could be tonight, a month later, maybe a year or two from now…. So, instead of waiting for the time when I’m already dead and I will not able to hear a word you say, please allow me NOW the privilege of hearing what you would be saying about me when I’m gone.” After she finished speaking, all her friends stood up, carried her in their arms, and placed her gently inside the coffin. There, with her old eyes closed, she began to wait for her children to speak.

One of the saddest practices that most people around the world blindly follow is to reserve the good words they want to say about the people they love until the day of their funeral. Eulogies are usually said when the person who would most appreciate hearing them is already dead. Wouldn’t our eulogies perhaps be more worthwhile if we delivered them while their subjects were still alive and able to hear what we would be saying about them?

Mother’s Day would be a good occasion to do precisely that. We could think of many ways of delivering a “eulogy” for our living mothers without unintentionally giving them the morbid feeling that there’s probably something we know about the state of their health which they don’t know, or that we’re expecting them to be gone anytime soon.

The word “eulogy,” after all, comes from the Greek word “eulogia” which simply means “praise,” “good or fine language,” period – not “praise for the dead,” not “good or fine language for someone lying six feet underground.” So, a eulogy can be delivered anytime – on Mother’s Day, on our mother’s birthday, and on any day for that matter. And it does not have to come in the form of a painstakingly crafted speech. A handwritten note accompanying a token, a brief call from overseas, a good word about her while you’re having lunch or dinner together would suffice. Most mothers are so easy to please. They don’t need expensive gifts and words laced with poetic similes and metaphors.

But, of course, nothing equals a eulogy that is delivered, not with words but with one’s actions. In fact, one’s spoken eulogy will sound painfully dishonest if it is not supported by the way one treats one’s mother in real life.

This Mother’s Day, I am reminded of the way my Mamang treated her own mother, my Lola Irene, while she was still alive. My Mamang’s life was, so to speak, a “living eulogy” for her mother. My grandmother (who worked as a schoolteacher all her life) was widowed at the very young age of thirty-seven. My Mamang was only ten years old at that time, and she had five siblings that included a boy (their youngest, my Uncle Eddie) who was only a year and three months old. Early on, my Mamang and her only sister, my Auntie Silda, did their best to assist my Lola in every way they could. In fact, after they finished their studies and started working, they gave their full salaries straight to my Lola so she could use the funds for their younger siblings’ education. They did this even while they themselves were already starting their own families. What was even more touching was that their husbands willingly allowed them to do so and even threw in their own support. The only time my Mamang and Auntie Silda were finally able to keep their salaries for themselves and their families was when their younger siblings finished their own education. But even afterwards, they continued to support their younger siblings whenever they could, and vice versa, for that was the way my Lola Irene taught her children to love one another.

My Lola Irene lived with us from the time we were born to the time she passed on. She helped my Mamang in bringing us up; and she was the person my Mamang always turned to for advise, for strength, for comfort. My Mamang always treated my Lola with unconditional love, with great respect and with filial obedience. They had occasional disagreements, of course; but at the end of the day, my Mamang’s love for her own mother always had the final word.

My Lola died at the ripe old age of eighty-nine. She quietly passed away one morning, after going through her twilight years, warmed by the assurance of her children’s love.

This Mother’s Day, as I think of my Mamang and all the mothers I know, I see their faces reflected on the face of the mother in the story we began with. And I realize how important it is indeed to seize every opportunity to eulogize our mothers, with our words and with our deeds, while they are still around and can still hear what we are going to say.
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*Copyright © 2023 Emmanuel R. Fernandez