"When Are You Coming Home?"

“When are you coming home?” My mom would always utter that to me religiously over the phone whenever I speak with her. Like a music aging, echoing in my ears even in my sleep if it would even let me sleep. I would always tell her in my irritant voice: “Mom, I’ve been there four months ago!” Before, I would tell her, “Mom, I was there three months ago.” Prior to that – “Mom I was there two months ago.” It was endless – “Mom, I was there a month ago.” And on and on like the first time – “Mom, I was there two days ago. Remember, at the airport?”
At the airport, where she dragged herself to walk just to see me go. She asked me naively as if were a child “Who are leaving?” I told her “I am leaving mom. I’m going abroad with my son and my husband. I’m going back to the states.” She smiled and held me tightly. Her embraces are the warmest, her smile, the sweetest. Her actions were lucid, flowing like water. Sometimes I’m thinking, she knows what she’s doing, that maybe she just refuses to see what was going on , and what was coming.

As I walked away from her, she asked me softly, “When are you coming home?” I just smiled at her and turned my back, I have to go. I turned around, had a second look at her, I saw the saddest face on earth. I want to go back, and feel her warm hands on my face the way she held my face when she left me on my first day in school and told me “Everything will be okay. You are my strong child.” Only this time, I will tell her “Everything will be okay. You are my strong mother.” But I didn’t. I was too weak. I was the one in denial. I was the one who is distorted. I was the one with the saddest face.

She’s seventyish now, God forgive me, I couldn’t even recall her exact age and here I am lamenting how aging affects her memory. How aging is inevitable and how she’s crossing the thin line between her illusion and her reality. Her asking me always when I’m coming home is almost like a sicked cycle in a sicked mind. I hate to hear that. I hate to see how age could defeat her. How age and aging would tear her memory apart, piece by piece, slowly and treacherously.

Last week I called her again, and just like before, she asked me: “When are you coming home?” I replied, “Maybe in two years mom, I dunno.” We’ll always end the conversation with “i love you” and “i miss you”, and of course, she’d end it again with a question “When are you coming home?”

This morning I called her. This morning was different. She’s in the hospital, she might even be in her “death-bed”, I insisted on hearing her voice. I talked to her briefly, as I mumbled and cried in between, I told her how much I miss her and how much I love her. She told me how much she misses me, how much she loves me and she asked me while she’s struggling her way to breathe : “When are you coming home?” I broke down in tears. It was deafening silence.

I wish I could hear her again say “When are you coming home?”

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Note: i wrote this after my last telephone conversation with my mother while on her “death-bed”. She passed away august 28, 2009.

Sources

Article taken from:

http://definitelyfilipino.com/blog/2011/04/14/when-are-you-coming-home/

Image taken from:

http://www.visualphotos.com/photo/2x4641997/mother_and_child_in_doctor_waiting_room_22ja0027rf.jpg