Nobody has ever loved as she had.
She has always understood more than anyone can ever understand.
She has always loved more than anybody deserved.
She has always cared more than she could offer herself to care.
No summary could do justice to the life she led. I can only say as much as those things we will miss, those things we love and will always love about her.
What will we miss?
.. The feel of her frail and gentle hands against our skin as she tries to rub away our pain with her herbal remedies, and how we have always been thankful for those herbs, often not realizing that it is not the herbs that heal, its her love, her gentle caress, her warmth and her desire to take away our pain because she hurts too.
.. Her voice that speaks of eternal patience and forgiveness. At the end of those days where we return drunk and noisy, regretful and pregnant, hurt and seeking refuge, angry and irrational, she has always been there to listen, to care, to touch. And then you’d know, things are going to be alright.
.. Her strength and unwavering faith in life and its goodness. How she always finds a way to collect all those coins for our fare and allowance; how she always finds the strength to wash and iron our clothes, cook our food and polish our shoes; how she manages to create slippers out of paper just so we’d know the importance of clean feet.; how she always tries to teach us the proper way for a girl to sit, for a boy to eat, for a parent to love;
.. Her love that transcends mistakes, overcomes shortcomings, forgives, and forever endures. Her love that shines from her eyes, flows through her veins, radiates from her smiles and emanates from all that she does. It is her love that keeps us going through the toughest of times and it is her love that makes every blissful moment even more worthwhile.
And now, we think, how are we supposed to continue living without the feel of her frail hands, the sound of her voice, the source of our strength, the meaning of unconditional love? How do we get by knowing that we may never see her smile again? And how do we accept the fact that she is not here with us anymore, that she won’t be there to listen when were drunk, regretful, angry and hurt?
The answer is family. She has always kept this whole family together, she has always tried to keep it close. She taught us that life is not about the things that break us, its about the things that bind us. If there is anything and anyone, who will help us get through this loss, its going to be our family.
As we say our last goodbyes, let us seek comfort in the fact that she has returned to the arms of the One who can love her no greater than anyone else and that she has left us with lessons, love and families that would endure just as greatly as she had in this world.
Nobody has ever loved as she had. We can only aspire to love as much as she had, to keep the family as close as she had.
She is not gone. She is in each of our hearts, she is in every family we have.
- February 10, 2008 -
delicious ambiguity.
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