She Was Always About Life

Celebrating Her Birthday

Today is my Mother’s birthday. This is the first year she won’t be here to calmly acknowledge it and say she’s thankful her health is improving. I know she’s not physically here with me anymore, but there still isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t think about her. I love her so much. I miss her so much.

When I was growing up, my Mother would light candles for death anniversaries for those who had passed. She also lit candles on their birthdays. As I’ve gotten older, I realized people tend to pause more for death than for life. I’d rather celebrate her birthday than the day she moved onto her next journey because my Mother was always about living in the now, appreciating what you have, and being thankful for good health.

The Kind of Person My Mother Was

My Mother was always about the spirit. About living. About helping people keep going while also taking care of yourself. That wasn’t just something she believed in generally. It was her whole life. She worked in the medical field, helped people for years, and eventually opened her own clinic helping people through addiction. Everything with her came back to improving life somehow.

She was also one of the most selfless people I’ve ever known. At the same time, her independence was extremely important to her, and she made it very clear that she never wanted me to have to depend on someone else if I could help it. For her, education was the first step toward that. She told me it was the one thing she could give me that no one could ever take away.

Usually when parents say things to you, it takes years before it fully clicks. That made complete sense to me immediately. What I learn is mine forever. Whether or not every detail stays in my brain is another story, but the lessons, skills, and degrees I earned belong to me. It was a powerful realization at a young age, and it made me want to make her proud.

My Mother was also incredibly generous. She could never let someone be hungry or homeless. After she passed, so many people told me stories about how when they first arrived in the United States, she helped support them financially or spent her own time helping them find somewhere to live.

It didn’t surprise me that she did those things. What surprised me was how many people had stories like that about her.

Bringing Her Home

Repatriating her back home was a lot emotionally, physically, and financially. I traveled across state lines to secure paperwork, dealt with the Philippine Consulate in Chicago, and tried to manage everything while physically exhausted and financially strained from taking time away from work.

I would do all of it again without hesitation. It was my absolute pleasure.

It felt good to get her home. It felt like a privilege to be the person responsible for doing it. There was nothing that was going to stop me.

I spent an entire day on a train just to take a seven minute Uber ride to the Philippine Consulate. When I finally got the paperwork, I cried. Then I ate Jollibee, walked back to the train station, and spent the rest of the evening riding the train home.

None of it felt difficult compared to the sacrifices my Mother made for me throughout my life.

What Stayed With Me

What I didn’t realize at the time was that bringing her home also meant I wouldn’t really have a place to visit her anymore. That part didn’t hit me until afterward.

This spring/summer I’m moving into her house because she left it to me. I’m planning on planting some sort of tree in memory of her. It’ll be nice to sit under it once it grows. And if I ever move, I’m bringing it with me.

There are also parts of her that never really left.

I got to look through so many pictures of her throughout the years and she was so beautiful. One of the things I learned from her is that you really don’t need much to enhance your own beauty.

I also learned from her that dollar store skincare products are probably not the best thing for your skin. At the same time, she wasn’t above using something reasonably priced if it worked. She always looked at the ingredients, not the branding. I was fascinated by that growing up. Everything was approached through the lens of, “Does this actually work for me?” rather than hype or celebrity usage.

Don’t get me wrong, she absolutely indulged in beauty treatments when she wanted to, but she taught me discernment. I’m in charge of what I choose. Honestly, I think a lot of how I approach beauty now comes directly from watching her.

She took impeccable care of her skin. I think she treated her skin the way I treat my hair.

She was also incredibly tasteful. Everything always felt polished, but never sterile. There was warmth and personality in it. Grandeur too, honestly.

That same discernment carried into everything else too. She knew what was worth spending on, what wasn’t, and what actually mattered. Nothing ever felt performative with her.

I genuinely do not know anyone who could learn and understand things as quickly as she did. She remembered everything. I don’t think I’m as smart as she was, but I also don’t think I pushed myself the way she did. She pushed herself because she wanted so much out of life. I think I pushed less because she worked so hard to give me a beautiful one.

And then there was her spirit. When she entered a room, you knew it. Her smile was everything.

Those things didn’t go anywhere.

The Life I Thought We’d Have

Out of everything I’ve done, my Mother was most proud that I turned out to be a good person.

She never really asked me for anything. I always thought that someday, when the time was right, I would finally get the chance to take care of her the way she took care of me. I never really got the chance to start repaying her for the life she created for me.

I thought that eventually she would live with me. It would have been a tough sell because she was fiercely independent, but I think she would have.

She would have shown me how to garden. She would have taught my boyfriend how to cook Filipino food without giving him measurements, just expecting him to use his senses and figure it out. We probably would have had some small dog she absolutely adored because she loved animals. Just not reptiles.

If I ever had a baby, I think she would have helped me navigate motherhood with exactly the right amount of support and distance. She was always very good at letting me become who I was going to become.

I’m also sure we would have had several oversized vases around the house that were too large for anything practical, but beautiful anyway. There absolutely would have been a refrigerator full of Diet Coke too.

And honestly, I think she still would have found some way to work and help people. If I taught her how to properly use the internet, I genuinely believe she would have found someone out there who needed her.

Conclusion

This post doesn’t hold everything.

Just this: My Mother was always about celebrating life, and that isn’t going to stop on my end.