Mother Damien

Dear P,
I was so happy to get your e-mail today. I am far from expert in sending and accessing e-mails, and our system has only been out in order after several weeks being out of order. Loving thanks for your prayers for my recovery, prayers to Our Lady. I would love to hear all about you and what you are doing. Nepal is very much in my thoughts and prayers there days. Iremember you with much affection. Much love M. Damien IBVM

Those were your last words to me, dated January 2009. I've been searching my mailbox for the latest and it seems we did not write to each other in 2010. Or maybe you were too ill to write and I never knew. Or maybe your fingers were too tired, trying to get the hang of the modern computers after your stubborn typewriter at Southfield, which you used with just your index fingers. In either case, I only curse myself.

I still have your letters, Mother. All of them. From Rathfarnham, from St. Stephen's Green, from Springfield, from Southfield- all of them sealed with love and prayers. No other letter's arrival could compare to the little flutter my heart did, when yours arrived. How careful I had to be to slit those aerogrammes, to ensure I did not tear your writing. How much it meant, just knowing you still remembered me and that you still called me pet. Pet. I'll always be that to you and you the tall, tall person who brought me compassion, resilience and honesty. I never hope to lose those. I always hope to remember what it means for women to be independent, strong and live the life they have chosen for themselves. I always hope to remember that to live is to make those around you happy. I cannot imagine giving my life to a cause the way you did- with such selflessness. But when I think of your blue habit, your wimple, your stockings (which sometimes ran a ladder) and your forever neatly polished shoes, I think I might try and do a little more than I am capable of. 

Since yesterday, I find myself standing in front of Loreto Hall, near the entrance, where the statue of Our Lady stands. It is year 2000 and you're returning to Dublin for good. I have soaked your white shirt with my tears and the metal of the cross on your chest is warm against my face because I've pressed myself against it for a while now. We will write to each other darling, and I'll always keep you in my prayers, you said.  

I've found myself turning less and less religious since my Loreto days, Mother. I don't have a definition for God anymore. But I know from you that praying is about the strength we transmit to those we love and those we care about. I don't know how much mine has, but what I have right now, I send it all to you.

When I shared my news of heartbreak, a dear friend wrote back today, "she did so much, the passing must have been peaceful," and knew exactly what I had hoped for you. I hope it was, Mother. 

http://thehimalayanbeacon.com/magazine/2011/04/05/darjeeling-mother-damien-leaves-for-the-holy-abode/#comments
http://expressions-impressions.blogspot.com/2011/04/to-mother-d-with-love.html

Friendship

I ask the cab driver to go faster because my heart is aching. The afternoon feels like nothing but a recap of years missed until the time we're taking photos, exchanging hugs and huddling away into taxicabs.

It's like we all suddenly metamorphosed into women. Crossing into a new decade. There are unwelcome flabs, blemishes and unnecessarily long, dry manes- reiterating the years that have gone by. There are also aches we had not hoped to encounter during the Loreto Hall days. But I guess that's what we meant when we said "the big bad world" back then. Wasn't the convent preparing us to take on such a world?

There were movies like "Ann of Green Gables", "Sound of Music" and "Huckleberry Finn", along with those on abortion. How come there wasn't anything on how to deal with miscarriages, heartbreaks and on what to do when the man you risk everything for jilts you? I guess at convents, they never think such things happen. It's all about ethics and virtues, that we're already learning to breach even while in school.

P raises a question about our generation being too scared to walk out and too scared to stay in. Why are we in transition? What would happen if each of us learnt to move on without the men we once claimed, like our younger sisters do. Is it the claim part that makes us this way? Or are we just chicken?

It feels so dishonest, sometimes.

As the cab goes faster, I wonder what kind of a man would not want to be with P who is always the person who keeps the girls together- at least virtually -on Orkut, on FB and who knows exactly how to say "I love you" without saying it. I wonder how any man would not want to be with S who i still like a school-girl, demure, neat and willing to fail her finals just because South Africa lost a cricket match. Why so much suffering stemming from men? I guess it's not even about men. I guess it's only our ego, sexuality and ultimately love. But what is love?

Talking to P and S over fruit-juice, I think of love as "the desperate" need each one of us feels to fly to Dublin, just to see Mother D one more time. I equate love with the smell of books in the English literature section of the library and Ma'am K's fireplace near BIBLIO series. I think of love as the bad feelings we all get when we hear how the Irish and Austrian nuns who wanted to die in Darjeeling were asked to leave and how grills have gone up around the Carmel wing and St.Anne's.

Still, there is no definition of love.

I am hurting from the goodbye hugs. Nothing changes the way you feel toward some people you've shared frangments of your life with. Perhaps insignificant, but shared. Perhaps that ache and the happiness of meeting again after so many years and still being able to lay your heart bare on the table alongside Home Fries, is love.