OFW sa Africa

All Saint's Day

It’s All Saint’s Day and people are preparing to visit their dead relatives in the cemetery. When I was in the Philippines, all of us will always go to visit my father’s tomb in Chinese cementery. We normally walked more than 1 kilometer before we reached it. Because of heavy flocks of people scattered around the cemetery, we always get lost and sometimes took us extra miles to walk and search before finding the right place.

Talking about All Saint’s Day, I still remembered what my mother told me about the few months of my father life before he died. When the Doctor diagnosed that my father had cancer in his esophagus, she tried to hide it from him. She just informed my father that he got a severe ulcer and everything will soon be all right. Of course, my father sensed that he had a grave illness and cure was nowhere in sight. Probably because he felt death was imminent, he told my mother that he was not afraid to die and was ready for that if this is what God wanted to be. But the only thing he regretted is he will die leaving his children too young for my mother to care for. I was 9 yrs old and my younger sister was just barely 4 yrs old at that time. Further on, my father calmly expressed to my mother that if it ever happened that she intends to marry again, he will always understand her and will have his blessing.

This story was told to me by mother probably when I was in High School. At that time, I did not really catch the very essence of it. Why my father was allowing my mother to remarry again if she wants too? Later in life when I was already married and have my own daughter, now I understand his point.

My mother was just 36 yrs old when my father died. As a single parent, she is responsible for our lives, education, food, shelter and everything. Of course, mother is only human and has her personal needs to attend to. There is a big sign for her to succumb to remarry as she was young then and apart from that she will have a helping hand to tackle the day- to-day problems that normally entered in a family like ours.

I must admit that my mother is not a perfect mother a far from being perfect I would say. But one thing that really made me proud of her is because of her decision not re-marry or even found a boyfriend during her younger years. I don’t know if she truly loves my father till the end or she was just too busy working to make end meets and find no time to entertain a new man in her life. I guess she is the only one who knows the right answer.

For what she endures as a widow and in taking good care of my sibling and me, I tried my very best to finish my bachelor’s degree and passed the CPA board exams. Time changed and we are now financially stable. Mother is now positively earning and experiencing the fruit of our labor. She had toured Hongkong, America, Boracay, Cebu, Tacloban and Bohol. I am also planning to sponsor her to go to Canada.

posted by Asthong Kutchong @ 9:16 AM