Guest Column: What I learned from Ma - a son's reflection

Mother’s Day becomes awkward for those of us whose mothers have passed away.

A day that is meant to be one of joy brings with it the poignant memory of absence and loss. A morning of anticipation to make a telephone call across the ocean, reminds us of silence on the other side.

While never begrudging and even joining those who appropriately celebrate the motherly heart that continues throbs with love, our recollections, as joy-filled as these can be, must always now be colored with grief.

This is not a complaint against life; it is only an acknowledgement of a fact of our human condition and the inevitability of a change in the meaning of Mother’s Day.

The loss of a parent is a unique one that expresses the special character of the relationship between parent and child. The grief is like no other because the relationship is like no other.

Most of the relationships that matter to us in life are formed in the course of life’s journey. In the case of a good friend, for example, I can recall the day when we met for the first time and, if the relationship ends, it helps to return in memory to the period when my friend was not a part of my life.

In the case of our parents, however, we have no memories of a time when they are not part of our lives. We cannot deal with their passing by returning to such a time. They are never absent in our lives until death.

In this sense, the experience of losing a parent is one, even when we expect it, for which we will always be unprepared; it is not an experience that one has had before or will have again. We can imagine and may even succeed in replacing other relationships in life; parents cannot be replaced or acquired anew.

There is an irreplaceable fact that belongs to this relationship that we use often as the norm to measure the meaning and value of other relationships. Acquired relationships that have grown in time and depth take on the character of being irreplaceable. The possibility of being replaceable is a mark often of superficiality in relationships.

The death of a parent is the death also of our own identities as children. We cease truly to be children only when our parents die. While the loss of a parent is unprecedented and marks the end of childhood, it must never signify the end of honoring and remembering.

One of the obligations of Hindu life is the daily act of remembering and honoring (pitri yajna) and one of the special modes of remembrance ought to include the effort of identifying the role of our parents as our teachers.

The Hindu tradition, in fact, regards the mother as our first teacher, but the truth of this becomes clear only in our own searching acknowledgement of lessons learnt. A teacher is never truly one until acknowledged by a student.

My mother taught more by example than by words; I absorbed the example and only now I search for the words. This Mother’s Day, I remember and honor her for the special way that she embodied and taught three values that matter deeply to me.

The first is the value for family. My mother came from a large joint family and married, at the age of thirteen, into another one. Family, for her, was not merely nuclear, but extended to embrace uncles and aunts, grand uncles and grand aunts, cousins and the children of cousins, nephews and nieces, grand nephews and grand nieces.

She embraced my father’s extended family as her own and knew them much better than he did. She never used generic titles, but knew each one by the special Hindi name that designated his or her specific place in the family tree.

I see clearly now the special affection that they felt in her presence, knowing that in her heart they had a special place as family.

Family is biology, but family, especially an extended one, is memory, recognition, and caring. My mother never forgot family; she was the repository of the complex details of family interconnectedness, lost now to members of my own generation, for whom the meaning of family has shrunk and who are deprived of the richness of what it means to be embedded and known in an extended family.

Today, when an extended family member recognizes me with joy and love, I do not take it for granted. I know that her value for family is what is still making it possible.

The second is her value for preserving memories. Whenever, I visited my mother, I always felt that her home was cluttered and I would argue with her, now regretfully, about the need to get rid of things. She did not disagree with me, but also never took my advice!

In the days and months following her sudden passing, I had the painful duty, with my wife and children, of sorting and packing her belongings. While there is much that she should have thrown out, I am grateful that she erred on the side of preservation.

In overflowing draws, I found long–forgotten letters that I wrote to her from India and England, barely legible notes of love from grandchildren, the earliest pictures of our childhood, and even the scrap of paper on which my grandfather wrote the name by which I am called today.

She never tore up or threw away a card sent to her on her birthday or a note of affection. I understand now that she saw the object, letter, card or gift, as preciously and tangibly embodying the love of the sender and giver.

She could not bring herself to destroy the forms that love took in these objects. She expressed love by preserving everything that was given in love. I am sure that my mother never imagined that the third grade report card she kept from her last term in primary school, before she was taken out of school to be married, would inspire and be displayed with pride on the walls of an Oxford University dormitory by her scholarly granddaughter.

I cannot imagine a greater source of joy for her. Today, when I read a letter from the long past, gaze on a faded photograph, or feel a baby’s first golden wristband, I am flooded with gratitude that she instinctively did not allow these embodiments of precious memories to disappear.

The third is her sensitivity and value for life. My mother surrounded herself with an assorted variety of pets. These included dogs, parrots, macaws, and a Capuchin monkey. Each animal had a personal name and a distinct personality with which she was intimately familiar and to which she responded appropriately.

She clearly thought of them as members of her extended family, drawn to her through mysterious ties of karma. Her care for them had the character of a religious obligation. Her love for animals stretched to the wild birds that she fed daily from a continuously replenished tray of fruits and vegetable and the strays that lingered at her gate for a morsel.

She mourned their deaths and accorded them the dignity and ceremony of funeral rituals. In the case of her pet macaw, her bird companion for almost thirty years, she challenged orthodox religious authority for the right to cremate him at a public crematorium, citing the example of Jatayu’s cremation the Ramayana. It does not surprise that she prevailed.

Today, when I hesitate to dispose the last slice of a sandwich loaf and I open the freezing door of my Minnesota home to scatter it on ice for the hungry squirrels in my backyard, I recognize the source of my own mindfulness and value for life in all its forms.

My mother was not, by any means, perfect and perfection is not a requirement of motherhood, even though it comes quite close to being one. She shared, with all of us, the weaknesses that we associate with being human.

But, just as perfection is not a requirement of motherhood, it is not also a requirement for a child’s love. Death does not extinguish that love and my understanding of my mother’s humanity infuses my love and grief with wisdom of gratitude.

Anantanand Rambachan | Professor and Chair, Religion Department, St. Olaf College email: rambacha@stolaf.edu