Motherless Daughter: The Legacy of Loss

“The loss of the daughter to the mother; the mother to the daughter, is the essential female tragedy.”
— Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born

It was January 30 and my 25th birthday. I was sitting here alone on this very special day of mine. My mother died almost seven years ago — I was 18. I was quite young and naïve. And nothing prepared me for the pain or the depth of the loss. Some people say it was easier for me to recover from the pain and loss at my age. But they were wrong. Until now I am still being haunted by the experiences of my mother’s death. The memories are still fresh and vivid in my mind.

After my mother’s death, my sister and especially my father had a nervous breakdown. They were both drastically depressed for a year, and now, thankfully, they have quite recovered. My younger siblings almost stopped going to school. Our businesses went bankrupt. We really sunk into financial crisis and there was even an unpaid debt. My father was no longer interested in finding means for our survival. We just relied on the “come what may” principle.

It tortured me a lot that I thought I wouldn’t be able to get over it, or be able to move on. I used to think that there was something terribly wrong with me and that this loss was visited upon me by some wretched twist of fate just to make me suffer. After this ocean of time has passed, tears sprang to my eyes in a moment when I remember her and the loss. I’ve felt guilty about the unhealed wound I carry, but the emptiness is real. The sense that I am “alone” (alone in a sense that I don’t usually confide with anybody more than with my mother), that death is inevitable, that I feel insecure in my friends relationship with their mothers, that I still search for her in so many ways and faces: these tell me the loss is real.

Thinking of becoming a mother in the years to come will be the most difficult area in which the loss will affect me, and which I have to face. The desire to remain the child in relationships, even parent-child, is a struggle to overcome. How does a mother act, anyway? How do I give wealth of love when I feel empty in the place where a mother’s love grows? How do I help my would-be-daughters feel good about their sexuality and womanhood when my mother died before I could learn these things from her? How could I convince them that I will always be here for them, that I won’t die before they’re ready, or ever, as they would wish? I know it wasn’t true for me…

I have reflected on the loss of my mother and tried to distance myself somewhat from the grief by trying to gauge its effect on my life as objectively as possible. This is effective when I am in my conscious self, but like most of us, a good deal of my time is spent in unconscious thought and choice, and they’re the grieving 18- year-old reigns.

Losing my mother has really affected my life drastically. Yet it molded me into a “tough” woman who could seemingly handle anything that was tossed her way. It also destroyed almost entirely my ability to trust. It has returned to haunt me when I sustained further loss of loved ones through death.

I truly believe that the depth of my mother’s death has made me what I am today. I am a survivor, mentally strong, determined, strong-willed, self-reliant, and independent. I also keep most of my pain, anger and feelings inside. I refuse to be vulnerable to anyone, especially to the opposite sex.

And that nameless, elusive and simply terrible feeling of hopelessness has been with me since. Even after 25 years of “living with my loss,” there is a general, chronic melancholy that has been inexplicable to me, much less anyone else.

There is emptiness inside of me — a void that will never be filled. No one in your life will ever love you as your mother does. There is no pure, unconditional and strong as a mother’s love. And I will never be loved that way again.

The Sweet Sorrow

“Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow,
That I shall say good night till it be morrow.”
– Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

The first few months were excruciating. Leaving the comfortable familiarity of my place was one of the most difficult choices I ever had to make in all my 22 years of existence. In my place, I had a life that was well suited to my character — a family that loved me, friends who laughed and cried to my jokes, and relatives who were supportive of my endeavors. In short, I was happy. I left all this because I believed I could be happier still. The spirit of adventure beckoned and I responded.

The first few months almost killed me. I missed those who loved me and those I loved, as evidenced by an endurable homesickness and depression. I missed everything about my place, from my afternoon hangouts to the routine discussions of issues at my aunt’s house. At the nadir of my depression, I realized that I even missed my own room. Those were the bleak moments.

The element of evanescence is an integral part of existence. If you paid any attention to your philosophy classes in college, you would remember this, and if you paid any attention to common sense you could confirm this. Living things, inanimate objects, the cosmos — all of these abide by the rule of the ephemeral, duration being an extremely flexible meter stick by which we measure time. A gadfly survives the slice of a single day, a mountain hunkers down for a hundred centuries, and the stars (as stars are wont to do) take their blessed time. But everything ends. Before anybody dares play the God gambit, allow me to capitulate and exempt the divine from the realm of mortality. I speak not of God but of His creation. The world abounds with the symptoms of this tendency to change, to cease existing as is, and to evolve into something different. Nature demands that its denizens evolve; natural selection is the Machiavellian way by which life selects its generation. Science, technology, architecture and art are concepts in motion, forever redefining a dynamic environment. Human beings, acting as both catalyst and being catalyzed, are probably the best examples of the inevitable, and the necessary function of change. Within one lifetime, we undergo a veritable onslaught against the status quo. We take leave our parents to challenge the world as adults, we sift through partners and peers as our needs mature, we acquire new skills and apply for alternative employment in the hopes of attaining satisfaction, and sometimes we relocate to foreign territories. We are a kinetic species. But if change is all good and natural, why does it hurt so much?

Everybody at some point in his life has had to confront a major change. In my case, several drastic upheavals have contributed to the motley equation that is my current personality. Leaving home for Manila was just one example. Changing my self and my perspectives, and adapting into a new lifestyle was another; but the most painful experiences I have ever endured involved saying goodbye to important people in my life, knowing I may never see them again. My lifestyle in Manila has provided me ample opportunity and time to meet some incredible characters, beautiful folks who have contributed generously to my world perspective: Jerome or Sabumnim, as we respectfully called him at our Tae Kwon Do lesson, from Seoul, Korea, who did nothing but make you laugh to your death with his green jokes; Nico or Nicholas, the French volunteer, who at first keeps silent and just listens attentively to our discussions, but would suddenly spoke sarcastically whenever he catches a word which seemed to be alien to him; Marlyn, Marissa and Ronnie, the Fil-Am (Filipino- American) nomads from San Francisco, California, who have explored more of this planet that is good for them — Marlyn, the energetic one who wears flamboyant accessories during our Tae Kwon Do lessons with Sabumnim and even during our outings to places like Baguio, Mindoro and Tabuk, Kalinga Apayao; Marissa, the vegetarian who eats bulks of salad at Subway and Mexicali Restaurants, and who likes nothing better than a savage debate on everything; and Ronnie, the new guy in town who still manages to flash his Close-Up smile even during times of hardship and who will haggle for anything even exchanging his own happiness for good friends. These are but a few of the unforgettable portraits that hang in the museum of my memory.

They say that you can know a person by the company he/she keeps — these people flatter my reputation. And accepting their eventual departure was an exercise in sorrow. Our final dinner and coffee at the café, the last sight before the sun sets to its final rest, the swan song smile as a friend disappears behind airport security, these salutations sear beyond the physical. The possibility that there might not be a second chance always leaves me heartbroken.

The pain is selfish for the same reason I fall in love or patronize a café, or rabidly consume Danielle Steel and John Grisham novels. I want these people to remain in my life because they make me feel good. Like a forsaken lover, I am envious of their present company, wherever they are. I have always promised to keep in touch, tried to save money for the eventual visit, to linger on the nostalgia, and to bolster my confidence by regularly reminding myself “we had something special”. The void is deeper than Jack Nicholson’s pockets, being the Hollywood’s highest paid actor.

This has happened many times before and it doesn’t get any easier. Changing lifestyles, meeting and leaving people, it always results in heartache. So why do I do it? Why not just stay in one place, keep a steady job, and restrict my acquaintances to my current demographic?

Simply because I cannot. Humans have come a long way from etching on cavern walls, but I feel my personal evolution has only begun. One day, I hope to settle into a more consistent mode of living, but for now I pursue my Darwinian instinct. The desire to experience the world is of a reciprocal nature. I need to travel, because I have so much of the Philippines to share. I need to try out other things, because only then can I appreciate my present circumstances. I need to meet new people and hear their mythos, because I have stories of my own to share. To trade recipes, compare cultural traditions, debate religion, and concur on the incompetence of our governments — interaction is a conduit that is mutually beneficial.

The pain of separation is necessary. There is no way to avoid it. But I guess it is all a matter of perspective. If the experience is genuine, then it will survive the rigors of time and distance. The people I have met will reside in the beaches and cafes of my memory, the places I have cherished will be stamped on the communal passport of all travelers, and the things that I have done will acquire permanence in my future achievements. In a sense, I will just take these experiences with me.

With that out of the way, I can stop worrying about my departures, and start focusing on my arrival, INSHA ALLAH!

The Huge Life Gamble That Is Marriage

I digress at this moment from the particulars of my parent’s story and ask a very general question: why do people marry?

Why is it that people continue to behave as if true happiness, that forever-and-lasting kind of happiness, will be found within the context of this demanding and engulfing commitment? It’s because despite dire predictions about the “death of the family”, the vast majority of adults do continue to move into marital unions. Most people marry, and most people spend most of their lives (except in their early adult years) living in families. Not only do most people marry, but they marry with the hope of being happy. This might seem to be rather strange and a blind kind of behavior given the evidence of marital misery and marital failures all about them.

Why, given the clear difficulties that can arise, does anyone do it? What is it that is offered to a person that could compensate for the risks involved? I mean, the risks of putting one’s sense of worth, of being needed and necessary, esteemed in this world, into the hands of another?

My question contains much of its own answer. For what marriage can provide, if the risks pay off, is everything mentioned above. The bond provides mutually shared space in the world, a place interdependent security. If my well being depends on my partner’s existence and well-being, then he is necessary to me; if his well-being depends upon my existence and well-being, then I am necessary to him: we are both necessary people. Marriage is, when it operates well, a means with which the couple manages to give each other significance. It provides for the adult what membership in a family once provided for the child: a home ground of the soul, an emotional safe shelter. If it works, it is the best sort of mutual support system, for each partner can bestow upon the other the sense of his or her importance and intrinsic worth. Each one of the pair is, on creation of the marital bond, part of a unit— to which the other part is uniquely and wonderfully necessary.

In the huge gamble in life that is marriage, we put our sense of being “someone significant” into the hands of another — hoping that the person will confirm and validate our worth, even as we do his or hers. The bond thus established creates a clearing in an otherwise frightening and impersonal wilderness. Human love attachments, when they flourish, confer a sense that one’s existence matters.

A Lost Child

And there was fear.

Not that the sort of things I’m saying aren’t the usual kinds of depressive talking — expressions of unhappiness, inner worthlessness, helplessness, “what’s the point of anything?” and as well as the general sense that I might not be able to make it, to go on getting my particular show on the road, to keep getting up each morning, to deal with the trivia, setbacks, and problems of daily existence.

My thoughts certainly went round and round in those well-recognized ways; a part of me surely wanted to fold and quit. But bubbling up through all else that I said, like a mysterious source of energy that keeps a whirlpool in motion, was the constant pumping forth of fear. One could pick it up, almost in one’s own gut. I felt like a human violin string. And if I could name this feeling, locate it and try to articulate what I think it is about and where it comes from – I would have to say it’s the fear that I’d be abandoned and rejected. To be deserted, desolated, utterly and unspeakably alone. And that would be unbearable. It would be something I couldn’t survive.

Realistically speaking though, astonishingly little had happened. My father had gone far away, quite literally, since my mother died six years ago. There had been apparently no rupture in our relationship. As far as current planning went, we’d been seeing each other. This was the outer truth.

The inner truth was that I simply had no belief that my father would return to us, having once gone away. I felt this to be so, having experienced it as logical and demonstrable fact - for I had no confidence whatsoever in the caring of others. I had, indeed, in the way that young children do, interpreted “going away” as “rejection”. And I seemed, again childishly, incapable of forming a self-comforting image; I couldn’t visualize my father’s return, our reunion during the month of Ramadhan and other family gatherings. It was as if my father was disappearing into a void that stretched across the totality of my mental horizons: he was gone by now, beyond my immediate view.

This meant the end. It is here, the inevitable and expected catastrophe. Of course it is here! I am unloved and unlovable nobody. And I feel like I will always be. Being alone… nobody cares. My father’s departure had, as much as anything else, served to prove that beyond doubt.

Choices In Life…

Recently, I have been forced again to think about my life and its meaning. It has been said that when it rains, it pours, and lately that has become a reality in my life. When things start going wrong, it seems that there is no end to it. Probably everyone has faced this kind of situation and going through it is just a matter of time.

Lately, I have not been able to be present for myself. I have been too busy taking care of the needs of others therefore I have been neglecting my own needs. I am aware of my lack of time, yet I have not been able to do anything about it. Lack of time does not just happen to me. I create it by making wrong choices. I am responsible for my own busy schedule, not anybody else. I don’t have time for myself anymore, much less my friends or family. I often don’t even have time to call home anymore. Tiredness has turned into exhaustion. There are too many commitments, too many assignments, too many responsibilities. There is just too much on my plate.

When I constantly abandon my own persona, my true self, I abandon my life and what I truly believe in. My choices in life do not necessarily represent me as a person, only my priorities that are upside down. I feel I exist thru my work. The more I get accomplished, the better. It has become my identity. This is exactly the opposite of what I have always believed in. This is why I am exhausted and not just tired anymore.

It is difficult to find reasons for the actions of others. It is difficult sometimes to understand my own actions. When your closest friends start stabbing you on the back, you might want to rethink the value of that friendship. When you start hurting people that are close to you, you might want to re-evaluate your own values as a person. How can I even think about trusting others when I cannot even trust myself? When everything that you do to others is not valued anymore, or when it is not appreciated you start to question your intentions. When you don’t have time to help others anymore you become overly preoccupied with your own life. Here lies the difficulty. Which one will you eventually choose? How much you want to give without giving your life away?

Summer is close. It is closer than I might realize. Summer means rest, relaxing, creativity, silence. I cannot wait until summer. I can’t wait to grab a book and drown in its pages while sitting in a coffee shop. I can’t wait to swim in the sea or to simply just have a sip of coffee. I cannot wait until I see my family and spend endless hours with them.

Thoughts to Live for...

1. "Even the best fall down sometimes. Even the wrong words seems to rhyme..." -- Collide by Howie Day

2. "When in doubt, do right." -- Joseph P. Kennedy

3.

...TO BE CONTINUED.

a social worker

I am Saripha M. Alangadi, a fourth year high school student. I have just completed a very difficult assignment given by Dr. Zaman Pandao. Yes, I had to work n a report on the plights of the... (to be continued)