Oh, Mama

I saw you last on your birthday. When I proceeded to your room to kiss you and give you my gift, you were surrounded by all of my siblings, except one, who was in church services. I do love you or I would not have bothered to come and give you a gift and even called before going to see you to check if you have anything for dinner, so I could bring it for you. I also called you in the morning to wish you Happy Birthday. I felt like an outsider once more. Everybody was there and already ate dinner and nobody even notified me about the get together dinner. . This happens so many times for decades and the hurt and pain that I tried very hard to bury, forget resurface, reemerge, return, revisit me. Sometimes, I think if it would have been better if I did not know you Mama, rather than knowing and seeing each other with no strong connection; being related with no reciprocation, with shaky bonding. Your indifference to me, your coldness since I was a child made me distant and develop a standoffish behavior toward you. They pierced my heart and dulled the memories. Yet, you expected me to do the responsibilities of the oldest child to take care of my siblings including washing and sterilizing the infant’s bottles and feeding them the formulas. I was so blessed that I got the motherly love from your sister, who raised me and took care of me. The nurturing, the support and the warmth she gave filled in what I wanted and needed from you. I know there was this jealousy that consumed you; however, she was the most giving soul in your family. Every year at Christmas, I would give her the Christmas money I received because she took care of me and she would always tell me to give them to you because you are my mother and you needed them more than her. There you were, using the money to buy things for my siblings and nothing for me and hearing you say, I did not need anything because your sister gave me what I needed. You were so wrong because you are my mother. Anything from you would have been a treasure. There was also verbal abuse in my adulthood I suffered from you as well as your criticisms, judgments, negative comments and your assistance and favoritisms shown to my siblings. There was a time, just the two of us in my car, when I asked why you gave me to your sister. You said, you were so poor to raise me. Yet, you had eight more children after me. I also asked you what were the things you did not like in me or I did to you for you to tell others instead of asking or telling me. You said it was Papa and I never heard another word, another utterance from you. Shivering with quivering voice, I told you Papa just followed the things you did. Your silence was so deafening, reverberating. Your reticence, resistance to communicate numbed my senses and I was mummed. These are just few of the many memories I buried, held down, repressed, suppressed that I was able to cope, function and went on with my life and got to where I am now. I let go of the pain, the hurt, emotional struggles and bore in mind to honor, accept and love you while I faced all the adversities, hardships, difficulties I had gone through in my life. I never understood why you treat me differently and yet, I visit you to see you and be with you, buy you things and take you out sometimes. However, when I visit you, I look at you and there is just this silence between us, a deafening sound of silence, like we are not there, an empty room. This is so sad and so hard for me for I cannot even buy you greeting cards about mothers because I do not feel those words said in the cards. So I buy the simplest cards and I cannot even write anything, except Love and my name. Will I even be able to write you a poem, a tribute? Like the ones I wrote for Papa and Mommy, your sister who raised me. Will I ever be? This poem is so difficult to do for I don’t want the old wounds reopened and bleed again. 12/6/20 Catharsis Poetry Silent One