(The following are the Words of Remembrance I spoke about my mother during the funeral service held at the Blacktown Adventist Church last 13 June 2013. I was terribly sad and upset about her death that I had to write this. Usually, I can deliver extemporaneous speeches, but not at this moment when I lost my dear mother---my friend, my best friend. Thanks to my niece Ruth Pearl Custodio for this photo)
There wasn’t anything my mother did not and wouldn't for me and my siblings. By the same token, there isn’t anything in the world I
would not do for her. This, (speaking before you in this circumstance), however is
really hard for me to do. How do I remember my mother? Let me count in many ways.
.
My mother loved hats. In all our life together here in Australia,
the big issue was where to house her tons of hats. She had different hats for each season. The one I am wearing now is her most loved ‘hat.’
That’s why I had always made sure this ‘hat’ could readily be found.
My mother loved flowers. Back in
the Philippines, she grew roses and orchids. Here she grew roses,
chrysanthemums, and a range of houseplants.
She also grew vegetables.
My mother also loved music and
songs. She enjoyed listening to
Philippine classical music called Kundiman. She liked the late Philippine
soprano called Sylvia la Torre. She also liked Andrea Bocelli particularly his
DVD called Under the Desert Sky.
She had a great singing voice in
her youth that she often did a duet item in the Seventh Day Adventist church she went to with a young
man who eventually became my father.
A few months ago, after she came
back from Merle’s house, I asked her in a joking tone ‘Mum, Merle told me you
were singing a song to her. ..How is it you don’t sing a song for me?’ Straightaway,
Mum stopped while we were walking in the hallway… straightened up her crooked body and sang
out loud…
Besame mucho…’
My mother was creative. With her sewing machine skills, she made
beautiful clothes for my siblings and me. She could even turn remnant fabrics
into beautiful tops, and also into beautiful and useful household things. She was also good designer. I remember when I
was an IAEA fellow in University of Florida when two American women stopped and
one of them remarked, Oh what beautiful dress!.
Where did you buy it?” I did not buy it my mother made it. She also made costumes in all the drama presentations
in my Christian ministry in a different church in early 1990s
My mother also worked like a
jet. When she had a house here, it
amazed me how she was able to put curtains on all the windows of her house and
even made chair and footstool covers--all just in a day. When I bought my own house, I had wished to
myself I had my mother’s skills.
My mother was a hardworking
person. In her great desire to fulfil
her high ambitions for all of us, she engaged in one business after another to
help my father support our big family, to build a bigger house and send us all
of us to university. She first ran a
cottage industry by employing lived-in machinists to make Ready To Wear clothing which she
delivered to a few outlets in the big, busy market place called Divisoria. She managed two grocery stores in a
supermarket in Caloocan City. At
the same time, she also managed a sari-sari mixed store near our house. She
also ran a boutique shop in the then newly established Manila Shopping Centre
and engaged in recycling business. She
also built dwellings to rent out accommodation to people from nearby and
faraway provinces who wanted to eventually settle in Manila.
My mother was a loving and
understanding mother. Unlike my father
who dealt with us with the rod, my mother disciplined us using the Word of God to
correct us from our wrongdoings. I
believed these two methods of discipline complemented that I could confidently
say that all of my siblings and I had grown up well.
My mother was kind, generous and
charitable. I remember all the stormy
days when she opened our house to our tenants and even prepared for them hot
soup and shared with them biscuits from our humongous tin of biscuits which she stocked at home. I remember also that time when
our finances were tight and she gave away her last money to the young pastor
who visited us. When I asked in protest
why, she said the pastor needed to put food on the table for his wife and his
four young children.
Yes, I remember my mother in countless
ways, which could make a big book. But,
most of all, I remember
my mother for her
big and unwavering faithfulness to a
great God whom she talked endlessly.
I could never forget in my youth
each sunrise when she kneeled in prayer and each sunset when she led my
siblings and I to kneel in prayer to God thanking Him for providing us with our
daily bread, asking Him to protect my father who usually worked on night
shifts, asking God to protect us from all evils, from sudden death or any
natural calamities and also asking God to forgive us from all our sins.
I saw before my eyes God’s great
faithfulness to her. When a really big
typhoon hit Manila which was commonly referred by adults in our neighbourhood
as
Viente ocho de Mayo, 28
th of May in the 1960s, she led my fearful
siblings and I who were watching the flood waters rise by the hour to a prayer
of faith. She told us God was merciful
and He would not allow our small house then which was similar to a typical
Queensland house built on stilts to be carried away in the flood waters, just
like those ones my father watched pass by
while he stood by our house which he already tied to the big trees in our yard even before there was flooding. The rain stopped just a ruler height before
the flood waters reached the floor of our house.
For a number of years, my mother
and went to this church until her mobility decreased. Nevertheless, she
continued to worship God. I saw her read
her Bible. I heard her sing hymns at
anytime during the day or night. As she
was old and frail and could not kneel anymore, I found her praying while
sitting down. When she reached her ripe age and found it hard to sit up for a
long time in bed, I found her praying while lying down early in the morning, ie
because she would not respond to me until she finished praying.
She once told me, No she could
not do things for us the ways she used to, but she never stopped praying for
us.
When cataract hit her eyes, I
read the Bible to her. I sang hymns to
her which she sang along with me, and also hymns which she could not sing by
heart. When her vision became better
after two cataract surgery, then we worshipped God together.
My mother loved Psalm 91. She knew by heart v. 16 in the
vernacular...at bubusugin ko siya ng mahabang buhay at ipakikita ko sa kanya
ang aking pagliligtas...
Yes, God had been true to His words. He
would never lie. Through all my mother’s trials, she came out
strong. She pulled through when she had
a triple bypass surgery in 1996, left mastectomy in early 2000, heart failure
in 2009 and then aspiration pneumonia in 2012.
This did not happen during her recent hospitalisation when she had a
minor stroke. The complication associated with diabetes, the atrial
fibrillation, high cholesterol and blood pressure took its toll. God had called
her to rest. She died in her sleep. Through all the trials and afflictions she
had gone through, God had beautified my mother.
It amazed me how people who don’t even know her while she was still
alive over the years said how beautiful and cute she was, even the paramedic
who came during her last hospitalisation said how cute she was even while she
was doing those involuntary jerky moments as a result of stroke. I had been
encouraged when she was in the hospital how some kitchen, nursing and general
services staff came by to say hello to her or just to see how she was going.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KcCm_8U1oA
My mother honoured God all her
life, and God honoured her. I believed
it was God’s plan to send Pastor Daniel whom my brothers and sisters and I have
never met to go the hospital to visit our mother. Just like the good kings in the Bible who had
a proper funeral, my mother deserved to have her funeral service to be
conducted in a Seventh Day Adventist Church which had remained close to her
heart despite her not being able to attend the church for a number of years.
My mother could not see what was
going on here. She could not hear what I am
saying. But her life has been a living
letter which we, my siblings and I have been reading over the years. The Lord planned it this way to serve as a
final testimony of my mother's life as she took her last journey on this earth.
My siblings and I and the rest of
our extended family praise God for her life.
God has been good to her. Glory be to God.
