BENCHWARMER

The courage of mothers
Ramon S. Dacawi

The date for Mother’s Day varies each year, but it always falls on the second Sunday of May. Four years ago this second Sunday, Noney Padilla-Marzan passed on.

She had accepted the inevitable and even prepared for it. She had written a “going away” list: coffin sealed, short wake with no shuffling of cards or serving liquor. No eulogies after the funeral mass. Cremation, with the casket going to whoever needed it, and the ashes scattered on a mountain she had climbed when she was already stricken with cancer.

She even wrote her own obituary, indicating May as the month of passing but leaving blank the date. She had readied cash for the funeral expenses and told husband Conrad against shouldering the costs.

“She’s my wife and I hope she’d forgive me for not keeping her wish on this one,” Conrad told me later. “We had lived happily together with or without money and helping give her a decent burial is the least I could do for her.”

She never bore him a child but she was mother to several at the children’s cancer ward. In comforting them, shouldering their treatment, easing the pain of grieving parents, Noney forgot her own therapy. She founded Minda’s Buddies, a cancer support group in honor of a friend who had earlier succumbed to the big C.

She pleaded to folk musicians against staging a benefit concert for her therapy.They staged it anyway, if only to ease the discomfort of being unable to help her who, for years, stood by her husband in numerous musicals for other patients.

When she knew she’d eventually go, she advised Conrad to love and marry again. To “give direction to your life”, she said. “She’s asking for you Manong,” Conrad texted me a daybefore Mother’s Day. “She’s asking for you, manong. Please come as she’s about to go.”

Noney was too weak to open her eyes, much less to speak. She tried but couldn’t write a dedication to a charcoal face of a woman she had drawn and wanted for my present. At the wake, I needed to drink to brace myself from the impact of all these substance of courage, love and caring.

When he heard, Alfred Dizon, the courageous publisher of The Northern Philippine Times, grabbed an eared bottle of brandy and rushed to the Baguio Memorial Chapels. Conrad and I met him on the hallway, led him to an unoccupied, unlit chapel where we steeled ourselves and kept Noney’s wish keeping alcohol away from the wake.

Noney was like Lorie Ramos, then a 43-year old widow with a 10-year old son. When she read about Noney’s plight, she asked Conrad to drop by at her rented house and pick up her support to Noney’s fight.

“I know how painful it is for Noney,” she told Conrad after handing him her donation. “I, too, am now into my second bout with cancer.” Noney and Lorie took on a friendship that blossomed until the end. Lorie dropped by one time to say goodbye, her voice reduced to a whisper by her affliction.

“I have accepted it and I’ll have to bring down my son so he can start bonding with my sister in Quezon City where he’ll grow up in when I’m no longer around.” She kept in touch with Noney who told me Lorie wanted to talk to me. I couldn’t get myself to ringing her up and never
heard from her again.
***
On this Mother’s Day, 35-year old Grace Biogan, should be out there washing clothes for neighbors. She has three young kids to raise alone, a mortgaged house to redeem and more
debts to settle.

She hardly earned any since November the other year. That was when his husband Elmer was diagnosed for lymphoma, a form of cancer. She used her time looking for support. With response from Samaritans the likes of that solo parent in Kentucky and Freddie de Guzmanin Canada , Elmer completed eight chemo sessions and looked on the way to being healed.

It wasn’t meant to be. Elmer passed away last April 26 at 38. A P5,000 support that Baguio boy Joel Aliping meant for Elmer’s fight helped pay for the burial costs. In accordance with tribal customs, Elmer was buried the following day.

In accordance with tribal practice, the widow has to keep herself in the house for a month before she could get out to do laundry. – email: rdacawi@yahoo.com for comments.