Pamilya: Remembering Mamá

Filial piety, family loyalty, and intimate details about Filipino identity

Series: 🇵🇭 Filipiniana: Writings about my own culture

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“She does not have much time. You have to come here as soon as you can.”

The weather forecast that day was not ideal for that long drive but we packed up our car with the necessities for a Winter cross-country journey: clothes, snacks for the road, pillows, blankets, emergency kits, and our dog (who was still a puppy at that time). That was not a planned trip. If I had a choice, I would rather fly than drive the 1,400 miles distance from Northern Midwest to the Eastern edge of North Carolina. Grateful that someone else was on the wheels for me, I settled at the backseat with the demanding puppy and opened my work laptop for unexpected fires that I needed to put out on a Friday afternoon.

Our paternal grandmother was on her deathbed and I had to be with her.

Photo by Taras Zaluzhnyi on Unsplash

Pamilya /pah-meel-yuh/ is the Filipino word for “family”. It is pronounced quite similar to the Spanish equivalent for the same word, “familia” and replace the “f” with “p”. Among Filipinos, family is everything. More often than not, we stop our entire world for the benefit of our family, especially our elders. Those of us who live abroad tend to setup emergency funds or use our savings to be able to afford an expensive roundtrip flight to the Philippines when a family emergency happens. This is especially the case for those who were born and raised in the home country and among those who were raised with a traditional upbringing abroad.

Mama Juanita

During that long drive, I thought about our grandmother. She was in her early 90s but it still felt surreal that I was facing that reality that always catches up with us in the end no matter how far or how fast we run away from it.

Mamá, as we all called her, would never let a weekend pass without calling her grandchildren even when we were scattered across three different countries and three different states. On almost all of those routine telephone calls, I would be asleep and unable to pick up her call because I tend to sleep in during the weekends. And, on almost all of the weekends, I would get a message from one or more (actually, most of them) of my cousins reminding me to call her back when I wake up.

Her persistence never waned, though. She never gave up. Her phone calls were to be expected and mailed-in-advance greeting cards never failed to arrive... on every birthday, every holiday.

Photo by Loume Visser on Unsplash

In the late Winter of her life, Mamá was as vibrant as she was in her other seasons. In true Juanita fashion, she summoned all of us virtually and in-person. Particularly, she summoned me her prodigal and most absentee grandchild. Among her grandchildren, I was the hardest for her to pin down. I was the MIA when it came to family events, phone calls, and most especially - going to church.

I was raised in closer proximity to my maternal side and visited their side of the family during vacations. I was brought up a little differently, although none of them made me feel that way. Whenever I came to visit, the days were filled with stories of how my father was when he was alive. I was introduced to food that he loved to eat and anecdotes of how perfectionist he was, how good he was with the guitar, and how neat he kept his things.

Upon our arrival in North Carolina, I knew what my responsibilities were. You see, I was never, still is not, and will never be that sweet and romantic member of the family who is constantly there. Who I am is that one family member who will be there when no one else is able to and the one to take care of the logistical matters so others are able to focus on the rest. I assisted my aunts with arrangements for hospice care, priests, church, groceries, decluttering, cleaning, and everything else under the sun to make our grandmother and everyone else who were about to arrive comfortable during their stay.

During the week I spent there to care for her, she asked for her furry blankets and vanilla milk. I bought her more furry blankets and bought boxes of her vanilla milk so she would not run out. She asked my aunt for a haircut & posed for a photo with the makeup I applied for her. She handed me the only remaining photograph of her mother, my great grandmother. She knew I'd handle it safely for the rest of my cousins, nieces, nephews, and the generations to come.

Mama in her 60s.

Every day thereafter, one by one my cousins, second cousins, uncles, aunts, distant relatives from across the country and abroad started pouring in. We probably made a record for the most number of Filipinos within one square mile in a given period for that sleepy North Carolina town.

Photo by Charles Givens on Unsplash

For each of my cousins, she laid important tasks that she knew we were extremely good at. Our eldest cousin, an architect, flew in from the Emirates and took care of the holiday festivities that I was not particularly keen on doing. The last one to arrive was our nurse cousin from Los Angeles who had to find someone to take care of her young children so she could be with our grandmother too.

I left North Carolina with my heart at peace. I made the pilgrimage that my father would have required me to do. It was done for love, yes.

However, among those of us who were raised with our deep Filipino traditions, it is an honor to fulfill our filial responsibilities. It is a duty that none of us would turn our backs on.

Before the year 2022 came to an end, I received a call in the middle of the night. Our very own nurse was present and by her side to feel her pulse and ushered her peacefully to take her last breath. I was glad she was there instead of me because I would not have known what to do. She was literally trained to do that and our grandmother knew that. She probably called upon all of us by design. She orchestrated everything up to her last breath.

Mamá left us peacefully and in the company of the family she loved.

Mama in 2021.

She was, is, and will be a constant. The most gentle but also firm in her convictions. She gave her all when she loved but she never lost herself in the process. She was her own person. She was herself, her wit, her memory, and her infectious laughter until the end of her days.

I thought about writing this today because my busy Friday was constantly interrupted by our cousin-group-chat because one of us will be celebrating their big birthday in July and we are planning to fly to London together to celebrate. It is one big party coordinated in at least three countries, maybe four.

Filial responsibility. A duty we all participate in joyfully.

This is us. This is a part of our identity.

“Sometimes you look at yourself in the mirror, any mirror, and you wonder why that nose looks as it does, or those eyes--what is behind them, what depths can they reach. Your flesh, your skin, your lips--you know that that face which you behold is not yours alone but is already something which belongs to those who love it, to your family and all those who esteem you. But a person is more than a face or a bundle of nerves and a spigot of blood; a person is more than talking and feeling and being sensitive to the changes in the weather, to the opinions of people. A person is part of a clan, a race. And knowing this, you wonder where you came from and who preceded you; you wonder if you are strong, as you know those who lived before you were strong, and then you realize that there is a durable thread which ties you to a past you did not create but which created you. Then you know that you have to be sure about who you are and if you are not sure or if you do not know, you have to go back, trace those who hold the secret to your past. The search may not be fruitful; from this moment of awareness, there is nothing more frustrating than the belief that you have been meaningless. A man who knows himself can live with his imperfections; he knows instinctively that he is part of a wave that started from great, unnavigable expanses.”

F. Sionil Jose, “The Pretenders”
F. Sionil Jose is a National Artist of the Philippines for Literature

This Filipiniana Series is an exploratory writing about the Philippine culture from the perspectives of a Philippine-born and raised Filipina. My goal is to explain commonly misunderstood mindsets and aspects of my culture. I will focus on the positive aspects of these cultural maxims, although I am not denying that there are negative sides of it as well. The web is ripe with the negative sides of my culture, I will not add to that clutter. Allow me to retake these seldom-explained and rarely-defended cultural values here in my tiny corner of the multiverse.

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Reflections:
🧐 How has your family unit contribute to your sense of identity?
🫡 How connected are you with your cousins and extended families?