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CEBU, Philippines – Mother’s Day doesn’t wear just one face—it shifts depending on who you ask, shaped by love, loss, and everything in between.
For some, it is breakfast in bed, handwritten cards, and well-meaning flower deliveries.
For others, it is an emptiness that refuses to be filled, a name that no longer has someone to answer to.
I fall somewhere in between.
As the eldest of five, I learned early that motherhood is more than just a title—it is a responsibility, a weight, a sacrifice.
I helped raise my siblings. And yet, when Mother’s Day comes around, I feel indifferent. As if the day wasn’t meant for people like me.
But I find myself intrigued—drawn to the way people speak about their mothers, how they hold their memories close like fragile glass.
Ernesta, 69, daughter
Mother’s Day didn’t exist the way it does now—not for 69-year-old Ernesta, at least.
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There were no bouquets, no grand celebrations, no day marked on the calendar to honor mothers.
Back then, love was quiet. It wasn’t spoken; it was shown.
As a young girl in the ‘60s and ‘70s, Ernesta had her own way of expressing devotion.
She spent her days selling fish, sweet potatoes, vegetables—anything she could to help her mother. It wasn’t a gesture, it was a necessity.
Because if she didn’t step up, her mother would have to do it alone.
That was how she showed love—not in words, not in hugs, but in effort. In ensuring her mother never had to walk the streets to sell goods without someone by her side.
“Dili man ko kaagwanta siya ra magsuroy-suroy sa pag paninda,” Ernesta admits.
(I couldn’t bear to let her go around selling goods alone.)
Now, decades later, that love hasn’t disappeared.
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When her mother passed away during the pandemic, grief settled into their home—between old songs, between the moments that should have been ordinary but now felt incomplete.
Ernesta plays the songs her mother once loved, trying to find her in the lyrics, in the melody of Aretha Franklin’s 1967 hit (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman.
And when Mother’s Day comes, she doesn’t celebrate. She remembers.
Because grief doesn’t ask for permission—it simply arrives.
“Para nako, natural kaayo nga pagkabayi akong inahan. Dili magpapildi, dili magpaluyaluya. Bisag wala na siya, naa gihapon siya sa akong panimuot.”
Grief doesn’t expire, she tells me. It doesn’t fade with time—it just changes shape. And no matter how many years pass, she remains a daughter, still looking for traces of the woman who raised her.
As Nay Ernesta puts it, “Ang pagkainahan dili makausab sa imong panginahanglan sa imong inahan. Magpabilin kang anak, bisan pa’g magkaanak ka’g imoha.”
(Motherhood doesn’t change your need for a mother. You remain a daughter, even if you have children of your own.)
JP, 12, son
Then there’s twelve-year-old JP—quick to laugh, quicker to run, always moving as if still racing against the weight of everything he’s lost.
To his friends, he’s just another kid—loud, playful, always up for a game. They do not know that grief has already shaped him, carved itself into his story like a scar hidden beneath his energy.
First, his sister. Then, his mother. As if loss had come in twos, as if the world had decided to test just how much a child could endure.
Now, he lives with his grandmother.
He doesn’t talk much about it. Doesn’t dwell on absence.
Instead, he clings to the memories—his mother’s laughter carrying through their tiny home, the way she greeted neighbors like old friends, how she somehow stretched what little they had to make sure they never went to bed hungry.
“Kung ma-short si Mama usahay, mangutang siya para lang naa mi ikapalit ug bugas,” he says, his voice steady even as his eyes well up.
(When Mama sometimes ran short, she would borrow money just so we could buy rice.)
JP’s mother Tessie was firm, hardworking, the kind of woman who didn’t break—not until grief took more from her than she could bear: losing JP’s sister to suicide.
With everything that has happened, JP stays strong, not because it is easy, but because his mother would have wanted him to.
He said, “Dili ko ganahan masuko si Mama maong mupadayon ko.”
(I don’t want Mama to be upset, so I keep going.)
What Ernesta and JP’s stories tell us
Not all love is loud. Not all Mother’s Day is joyful.
To those experiencing their first Mother’s Day without their mother—there is no right way to grieve. Cry if you must, Ernesta says.
“Kung kahilakon ka, ihilak. Kung ganahan mag-celebrate (sa Mother’s Day), i-celebrate. Ingon ana jud ang kinabuhi. Usahay, sakit mabuhi sa kalibutan.”
(If you feel like crying, then cry. If you want to celebrate Mother’s Day, then celebrate. That’s just how life is. Sometimes, it hurts to live in this world.)
JP doesn’t have grand advice, only a quiet certainty. Pray.
When grief feels too heavy, when silence grows unbearable, when love has nowhere else to go—pray.
Ernesta and JP live in different realities—one shaped by years, the other by youth. Yet grief collapses time, binding their stories in ways only loss can.
Ernesta, now a mother, still reaches for hers through songs and quiet rituals.
JP, still a child, carries his mother’s lessons in the way he endures.
Their grief is different, but their love remains—constant, unshaken, a reminder that a mother’s presence never truly fades, even in absence. /clorenciana
