March 12, 2004

• Dear mom,

  
  

  Happy birthday mom!  It would be your sixty-fourth birthday.  I miss you, but I hope that you’re enjoying your after-life.  It’s been three and a half years since God called you away from me, and although time has helped to heal the gaping wound of your absence from my life, I can’t help but wonder if I had done or am doing the right things and making the right decisions.  I feel the need to apologize to you for not graduating on time and for not getting married while you were still alive.  Those were the two things that you asked of me, and I couldn’t pull through for you.  I’m sorry.

  
  

  When I woke up, uncle Doming was talking to lola Titay about how I’m not married yet, making the implication that I am going to be alone.  You pressured me a lot to about it, and I hate it more than I hated it then.  I think it was because you were more direct with me, in that you told me what you wanted, but you didn’t tell me what to do.  Uncle tries to tell me what to do.

  
  

  It’s not like I’m not trying.  I am working on myself, to make myself better, so that I can offer that special someone more than I am right now.  So it may take a while.  I know you’ll understand.  You always did.  Uncle’s empathy skills are not as refined as yours.

  
  

  Lola is doing okay.  At eighty-five, she’s still strong, but not as strong as she once was.  I have a hard time communicating with her.  I don’t know if it’s because she can’t hear me or if it’s because she doesn’t understand my English or my Tagalog.  The communication gap is probably a blend of all of the above.  She wants to go to Guam, to stay with auntie Maria and uncle Loping.  I don’t know how long she’ll actually stay there, but I just want her to be happy.

  
  

  A mother is someone who can take the place of anyone, but whose place nobody else can take.  I wrote a lot about you in my March 12, 2003 entry.  It still all applies.

  
  

  I love you mom.

  • 12:21 pm
  • 1 Comment