Inheritance

I've never really written about mom.

At 34, it seems I'm now in an age when I feel quite uneasy being too close to my mother, not for anything, but just for the societal (masculine, macho) expectation that grown-up men need to display strength and independence.

But, then again, I have also not written anything about her since she died four years ago.

I was bound to leave for the UK where I practice as a pediatric intensive care unit nurse the night when mom complained of severe abdominal pain and vomiting. She had a long-standing kidney disease which required her to receive dialysis twice a week, and a few months prior, she was admitted to hospital because of a gastrointestinal infection. The pain was so severe that night that I rushed her to the nearest emergency department. Little did I know that mom would pass away the next day.

Losing mom was unbearably, terrifyingly painful. Somehow, the pain has numbed over the years, but, even as I type this story, it feels like numerous tidal waves of emotions are incessantly hitting me from all directions, relentlessly resurfacing the agonies I have suppressed with all my strength. When her heart stopped, I quickly took over resuscitating her, drawing from my years of experience of dealing with critically-ill patients. But losing her was all the more heartbreaking, not only because I took it as a personal affront of not being able to save my mom when I have saved countless others, but because she was the one who taught me and pushed me into becoming a nurse.

When I asked mom what she wanted to be if she had the chance to finish her schooling, she said she wanted to be a nurse. She grew up in a poor fishing family in central Philippines. Because of poverty, she only finished grade school. She went to Manila, the capital city, because everyone from the provinces thought at the time that the metropolis held the key to finding work that pays. She found a job as a nanny in the suburbs during which time she met my dad. She had a particular fondness with children, and would always love to interact and spend time even with children she didn't know.

During my childhood, we lived in a shanty which used to be the World War II era house of my great grandparents, mainly because dad did not have the money to buy a new house. My dad worked as a part-time construction worker, part-time electrician who earned his money depending on when he was needed. Because we were so poor, mum always said that the only thing of value they could bequeath to us was education - the knowledge we acquire was the only thing no one will ever be able to take away from us.

And I think the value of a good education was my mom's greatest investment. She never had a chance to go to university even though she always wanted to, so she made sure that my sister and I were able to achieve the dream that she never fulfilled. I can still remember the times when my mom would forego buying her own clothes because she wanted us to have new school shoes. There was also a time when she led many jobs, going house-to-house to sell cosmetics during the day, and spending the night cooking Filipino eclairs to be sold the next day. I asked her once why she wouldn't just go to sleep. "I need to help your dad so we can buy you notebooks and school uniforms."

In retrospect, the funny thing was that, at times, she might have pushed her crusade to give us a good education to the extreme. Whereas other children of my age would be running in the fields, flying kites and basking in the afternoon sun, I was plowing through lessons of Mathematics and Science under the watchful eyes of my mom, her yielding the rigid bamboo ruler of my dad, ready to smack me in the forehead if I ever dare steal a view outside of our window. I was force-fed textbooks for Sixth Grade when I was barely out of kindergarten. But a child is a child, and I can remember a time when I sneaked out and played with my cousins one summer afternoon. To this day I could still hear my mom shouting at the top of her voice for me to come home. Heedless of her calls, I decided to ignore her until she was forced to come fetch me in the playground. Fully aware of the repercussions of forcing mom to abandon her nest just for me to come home, I quickly ran and hid in my grandmother's house. Ever the tolerant one, grandma told my mom to let me play, and she told her to go home instead. That did not go well. At dusk, when I had no choice but to come home, I was made to kneel on a layer of rock salt (a common means of discipline at the time) as punishment for my transgressions.

Mom was my personal tutor throughout grade school, and a competitive one at that. She was proud that she was teaching me the best way she can, and she wanted others to know. So when a time came during Fourth Grade when my teachers discovered I had a talent for Mathematics, they informed mom that I was to participate in an inter-school Mathematics competition. The morning of the contest, she came to me while sorting out the folds of my school uniform and said, "if you don't win you will not have your allowance for a week." I can only laugh whenever I remember those words but they did strike fear into my heart back then. I have to win at all costs. I have to study hard to make sure mom will not withhold my allowance. I cannot last a day without eating my favorite burger at the cafeteria.

I lost. Mom was true to her words.

When I entered high school, her involvement to my studies became less and less frequent, though she never failed to remind me to finish my homework and excel in my examinations. The good thing about her is that she was never shy of my achievements. Indeed, she always said, it is what you achieve with your education that you can always be proud of. Her hard work in inculcating the significance of studying paid off when I finished as First Honor year after year after year, from the time I started kindergarten until I graduated in high school. Though it was always dad who went up with me on the school stage to put the medal around my neck during graduation ceremonies, it was mom you will see in the corner endlessly telling other parents how proud she was of me. "Jun-Jun (my nickname) finished First Honor again!".

I was at a crossroads when it was time to apply to university. My group of friends all wanted to be engineers (in fact, one ended up as a civil engineer, one as an electronic engineer, and one as a mechanical engineer) but I thought of bringing my interest in Mathematics to a higher level and take up BSc Mathematics. Unfortunately, at the time, Mathematics was not a popular career choice in the Philippines, nor was there enough career pathways for someone who studied Mathematics in university. "What will you become, a teacher?" My mom certainly did not have anything against teaching, and in the back of my mind there was certainly nothing wrong in being a teacher, but ever the practical one, she thought that teachers did not get paid that much. "Why not take up nursing? A nurse also does a lot of Maths. You get to compute medicines for your patients. And you will earn a lot more than a Math teacher."

And that's how she sold me into taking up Nursing in university. I would always like to think that she was trying to fulfill her dreams through me that urged her to influence me into taking up a degree quite tangent to what I really wanted (although I know for a fact that she was also influenced by the popularity of Nursing at the time, especially considering the high salaries of those competent enough to be employed in the United States and Europe). Nursing was very challenging to me, and there was a point when I almost flunked, but through time I began to love and recognize the value of Nursing as a profession and personal vocation.

And she was not wrong. Nursing requires a lot of Maths. Aside from the obvious that nurses compute medicines to be given to patients, we also compute resource allocations, trends of patient outcomes, workforce recruitment and retention, effects of technology on patient care, and so much more. Moreover, as a nurse researcher, statistics and data analysis are constant dimensions of my practice. Not a day passes that I'm not presented with big data that must be analyzed. My mom was right - I was not only able to quench my thirst for Mathematics but more importantly to apply Mathematics in a way that will positively impact people's lives.

Mom got diagnosed of chronic kidney disease when I graduated from university. She needed to go to a community dialysis center twice a week and would need to be in hospital for monthly laboratory tests. But her disease did not stop her from reminding us to pursue more studies. While taking care of her and fulfilling my work hours in hospital, I took up a Master's degree in Nursing. It was quite an intensive program that I had several sleepless nights just to be able to meet the workload. One time I was really worried about her because her blood pressure was too high, and I insisted on sitting in her room to monitor her. "Don't. Finish your paper. I'll be fine". She closed the door and did not let me in until I guaranteed to her that my academic work was done.

There is no universal health coverage in the Philippines (despite what the government claims) that every test, procedure and medicine need to be paid out of pocket. This made having chronic kidney disease really expensive, and unfortunately, it came to a point when my salary was no longer enough to cover her medical expenses. Coincidentally, a British employer was in Manila at the time looking for nurses with background in pediatric intensive care. And so I made the decision to apply for the job and move to the UK. But instead of being downhearted, my mom pushed me to continue the move. "I can never give you everything that you want."

A few years after settling down, I decided to pursue postgraduate studies in medical statistics (an excuse again for more Mathematics). I told my mom I was accepted at the University of Oxford. Three days after, my sister sent a message thru Facebook. "Kuya, our aunt wanted to congratulate you for being accepted at Oxford." I wondered how this came to be since the only person I ever told about Oxford was my mom. "Oh, after your phone call, mom went to the neighbors and told them about your achievement!"

Now that I'm married and got my own little boy, I can only say the same thing that my mom has taught me - that there is nothing in this world that I can ever bequeath to him other than a good education. Yes, we no longer live in a shanty and he has access to the best of what the British educational system can offer, and yet, nothing can match what a parent can imprint on a child, that is to build the fundamentals of learning, of maximizing the opportunities to see, hear and know the world.

I can never be thankful enough for what my mom has given me - she has given me her life so that I may become who I am now. On that night when I failed to resuscitate her, I always thought whether I have ever repaid her for what she has given up and worked hard for me. She did not only instilled in me a deep love for learning but she also planted the foundations for which I could make use of that knowledge to take care of other people's lives. In fact, every time I encounter a sick child in the hospital, I always thought that mom would have loved to take care of that child had she ever had the chance to learn how. She passed to me that love, and gave me the tools so that I can make that love known and felt by others.