THE LIBERATING MOTHER
Dr. Neville D’Cunha
Associate Professor
International Relations & Diplomacy Department
Faculty of Administrative Sciences & Economics
https://revolutionfromhome.com/2016/04/absence-village-mothers-struggle/
My Mother stood guarding the door, frail and unsteady on her feet, much shorter than my six-foot bony frame. She was dazed and with a shrill voice said, “You are adamant to leave? You have hardened your heart?”
There was a pause in the conversation. For this was not a continuation of our ordinary day, humdrum chat. My mother was talking about life in the open. My mind wandered back to the past. I was twenty three and secretly married to a girl, rebelling against her wish. I was always a mama’s boy, so whatever precious independent spirit I had inherited had been nurtured around her. In my formative years she provided me with an up-close study in how freedom has to be woven into a whole way of being.
And then she began again, jolting me back in the moment. “You’re leaving your mother and home?” I stared determinedly at the ground, anxious not to show that I was clinging to her every word, trying to make out her true meaning. I held my emotions inside my heart and answered. “Yes, Yes, I have rented a house.” “And you’re going to live with that girl of yours?” “Yes” I asserted.
She mellowed her tone, resigning to the inevitable, half proud and half pitying. In bringing our conversation to a close, mother left me with these words, “Ok! You are man. Now you have a wife, but you don’t have a job. I just want you to never forget one thing. As you leave your mother and home, don’t let the world rule over you. Every relationship will demand you make adjustments, concessions — don’t let that discourage you. But always remember that I have taught you every precept you need to live by. Follow your path. Now you have your freedom.”
Nearly twenty years have passed since my mother liberated me, and I ventured to experience my relationship with the world, first hand. In presenting myself to the world I was determined to assert my free will. And yet the forces ruling the world are formidable with enslaving intentions. During these years I had many bitter and sweet encounters. I have raised my only son, come closer to my wife, moved many homes, as well as travelled widely. I have explored life as my mother handed it to me on that eventful day many years ago.
In the intervening period, when I risked my all and had come tumbling down like Jack-n-Jill flat on my face in full view of a jeering world, I had revisited my mother to be liberated by her, one more time. To be reminded by her that although I will face tougher times, I have to negotiate life under all circumstances, for life can never beat me to the dust, to choke my breath, to bring me to my knees and call ‘quits.’ I learned to appreciate each day, not for what I was accomplishing, but for the experience of being alive. My mother nurtured me and then liberated me.
I think of my mother, and feel sorry for the millions of sons and daughters whose mothers fail to liberate them leaving everyone wounded in the heart. Most of the adult relationships that go sour cause for some where a mother has not let go of her child. In that journey through life, human beings must overcome the neurotic attachment of being the child-of-somebody. This letting-go is an essential part of a human journey. Unless every mother and child performs this crucial sacrificial process, we will keep on having hurtful relationships. In this, the initiative usually rest with the mother. The mother is a crucial cog in the ever moving wheel of humanity’s ongoing journey to fullness. No one is excused from this crucial act.
And now, after three decades of encountering valleys and mountains, successes and failures, my gaze is drawn to the bedroom adjoining my living room where my once feisty mother stayed for four months fighting a losing battle with cancer. In observing my mother during the last part of her life, I learnt crucial lessons as to how she kept her freedom intact and properly meeting the inevitable reality of pain, suffering and eventual death. As a parent and a child myself, I chose certain therapeutic gestures like massaging her feet, reciting mantras and reading certain scriptural texts to comfort my mother in her last days. I took the opportunity to heal my relationship with her. On her death, I intensely prayed and had the courage to liberate my dear mother’s spirit. She deeply expected this from her liberated son.
