how mom taught me love

Growing up, I got pretty acquainted with the definition of love. Not in the literal sense though, more in that sense you see and hear and feel. I got used to the idea of tangible love. And now, I know many people aren’t as lucky as I was, to know their biological mother, for her to know them back and get to keep her for seventeen years, but I did. I was that lucky.

Love, the tangible love, I knew was there when mother renounced her youthful body to create a human being inside of her. Love was spending sleepless nights with a smile on her face because she had to feed her new baby every hour. Love was working every day for eight hours to get some income to buy her baby that hella expensive formula from the supermarket. Love was hearing that baby cry the entire day and still having the patience to cuddle it in your arms until it fell soundly asleep. I knew all those actions meant love once I put some thought into them, a decade after they had happened.

I know the Bible paints hell as the space your soul goes to when your sins don’t equal your ‘good deeds’ tally. The absence of God, the entity that created you and loved you, because your soul was meant to be loved. And I think I’m starting to understand that now.

Love is essential for us, human beings. Something that cannot be seen but through actions, cannot be proven but by words, cannot be felt but by faith. And I was sure mother loved me. I am sure, maybe, she still does. I mean, the love I still feel for her, even now, it overpowers everything else. And love has a hazy characteristic, too. It is the strongest when everything else fails.

So, yeah, I’m a freshman in college, orphan of a mother, daughter of a widower, sister of another orphan of a mother, and I’m crying on the weekend of Thanksgiving. But that’s not because I have no thanks to give. On the contrary, I am way too thankful. For knowing and recognizing love at such a young age, for feeling it for seventeen years, and for being wise enough to know it won’t ever come again. Love like that cannot be duplicated or replicated, it is meant to be felt once in a lifetime, and I certainly did.

Love, like the soul, is unique to the giver. Everyone shows love different ways. My brother does it by trading awful jokes when he sees my sad eyes, to see if he might perk me up a little. My lover does it by saying sweet words and reminding me that, though my mother is gone, that love is still out there. And it is. It is alive in me, at least.

Love, then, does not erase itself. Once you have the wonder—or curse—of knowing it, it lives there. A mustard seed, a flower in the winter, it is undeniable. And though most of the time love is meant to be reciprocated, when there’s only one body left to feel it for the both of them, love lingers. It stays in the corner of your mind, bugging you when you’re falling asleep and you remember how love had a particular scent, coming from that person. You bury it, but you remember it when you’re driving down the street and their favorite song comes on the radio. And you collect it, for all those years, as long as your life lasts, until you find someone you can shed that love into, pour that love out of you and hope to fill someone else. In my case, I think if I’m lucky, that same love I learnt from mother will only be able to be replicated with my daughter. If I ever have one.

So, yes, I saw love when mother drove me to and from school against the clock because her lunch period was over. I saw love when she would refuse to eat so I could fill my starving stomach, and I saw love in that hospital bed, when she stayed just long enough so I could feel that love once again, memorize it, taste it, have a life ahead so I could miss it.

It comes in the love of a mother that, though gone, it is still enough to keep you going, even if you wish your organs would collapse one by one, too. Even if you wish it was you in the casket and not her. It is the love you still feel, writing piece after piece to pay homage to her memory.

So, if I knew such love I can depict it into words, I think you ought to meet my mother. Well… not in the full sense of the word, because, duh, you never will, but let me try.

My mother was my ally. She would be fierce when I was in danger, even if it was just a bully from school. My mother liked fancy high heels, but she also loved nude sandals. She did her makeup barely traceable, and her hair was always up in a ponytail with bangs at the front. She wore jewelry, not to brag but to look pretty, and she always spoke confidently, even when faced with her worst enemy. Yes, my mom was a lawyer, so she dressed and looked the part. She could sniff your lies and ask you to spill the truth, and she could intimidate you with fancy words she’d learnt in college. She had trouble sleeping because she always had a habit of planning, scheming and thinking ahead. Her laugh was peppery and if she had not been my mother, I would’ve been terrified of her. She was brutally honest and ruthlessly funny, and she could see the bright light in a picture full of black.

She was the same person who juggled her work enough to prepare a surprise party for me when I was ten, who planned a vacation every year to spend time with me, who patted the couch when my face was sullen and knew my crush had said a mean thing about me. The one who never complained over the always-there pile of dirty dishes, the stains on the floor because I had accidentally spilled coffee. She was the youngest daughter but the oldest mind, and she was the one everyone was jealous of. Not because she was wealthy, but because her soul was rich.

You see? Who will I ever encounter in the rest of my lifetime to match such characteristics? Even displaying it on paper makes it feel like it is a crafted character, but she is not. A year ago she was real and alive, and sad, and desperate. But breathing. And since she wasn’t a character, I couldn’t keep her alive for much more than her due.

In every one of those aspects I narrated, there was love. For herself, for her family, for her job, for her God, for life. She loved life as much as she loved me. And the way she did my homework for me when I was learning how to read, or how she managed to fit a trampoline into the garage because I wanted one as a kid, that is love. Is it not?

What I’m trying to say is, love isn’t a word. It is not a combination of letters so it adds to a syllable, and it is not something even movies can portray. Love is a combination of seconds that add up to years of knowing someone, but not even those decades are enough. Love, then, belongs to a person, just like the soul. For me, that was my mother. For you, that might be a sibling, your lover, or maybe no one. Not everyone is as lucky as I was.

And so, hell isn’t the place where you burn because you were jealous or surrendered to lust. Hell is the place you inhabit when that love is gone, and you’re left with its echoes, with the knowledge its existence was real but it is gone now. Hell, for me, has been the last year without her, with a father who complains over all those things she managed to do, not because she liked them, but because she loved me.

If you’ve ever been as lucky to meet such kind of love, don’t let it go. Take pictures of it, sing songs to it, write about it, touch it, hear it, live it. Because, one day it’ll be gone, and those memories will be the only thing that keep you from becoming loveless.

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hi! this is. a piece i just wrote cause i was feeling nostalgic. i apologize for the sappy feelings in advance, and hope someone else resonates.

thank u for reading

profuse greetings, mel.