The Choice She Made
(Gail Pelayo)
With whatever remaining strength she can gather, she stopped whimpering after my aunt told her that I was crying endlessly. She looked at me and with a softened face she tried hard to bear the pain and kept herself from moving restlessly. It was the last show of courage my mother exhibited before she succumbed to cancer. She chose to overcome the pain just to console me. For me, if there is anything that exemplifies the power of choice humans have over their circumstance, it is this; and if there is anything that my mother taught me about life, it is being courageous and the extent to which we can make choices for our own good or for others regardless of the situation. She cannot run away from it even if she wanted to: for sure she bargained, for as many as one can imagine and with whatever she has left just to be relieved of the suffering; and at times when her will failed her, she asked to be taken earlier than to live the remaining days in agony. Valium and morphine did not do much than to take her consciousness for most of the time, yet at that moment, she chose to be a mother to her grieving child. At times when confronted by a seemingly insurmountable difficulty, I turn to this memory. I find inspiration in the fact that humans, even in inescapable situations and in their greatest agony, can rise above the challenge with grace and dignity.
With this, I know my mother rocks!
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