The Ones You Leave Behind

I wrote this on the evening of Monday, the eve of my departure for Hongkong (and from here, the States). 

So, tomorrow, I finally head off for my sabbatical. I should be happy, and I am, but there is the ache left by the knowledge that my going is causing some pain to loved ones.

I am thinking especially of Mom. Last night, after the Province celebrations for the feast of St. Ignatius, I went to say good-bye. When I got home, the house was dark. She was already in bed. She looked so frail, so vulnerable, lying there. I woke her up and we talked a bit. I tried to reassure her that it was only two months, that I would call and email.

But I guess she knows that these first two months are the start of my leaving the country more or less for good. I will return in October for her 80^th birthday, but will leave for Rome soon after that. And even though I will come back from time to time, my home will be in another country for the next few years.

So no matter how I tried to be cheerful and casual, as though this was just one of my short trips abroad, I guess both of us knew that there was a qualitative difference to this parting.

Chinese Filipino families are not demonstrative where feelings are concerned. There is much left unsaid, unexpressed--simply felt, guessed, intuited. So when the frail, ailing woman who is my mother lifted a hand from her pillow to touch my cheek every so briefly, something she has never done before, I knew and felt all her unspoken tenderness, sadness and love in that brief caress.

And so I am writing this, because my brothers will print this out and let her read it, and so she will know that I know and am so grateful for the sacrifice she is making in letting me go, without question or complaint, as she has let me go time and time again in the past twenty eight years of my Jesuit life.  I can only imagine that it’s gotten more difficult, not easier, over the years. When I first left home to enter the Novitiate in 1980, Mom was only 51, only two years older than I am now, with a full and active life and many other children to keep her occupied. Now she is turning 80, and because of her Parkinson’s disease, she doesn’t get out as much as she used to, but rather spends most of her time alone at home, with TV game shows and soap operas as her only companions.

What is so clear to me this evening is that, while those who leave home because of the Lord’s call sacrifice something, those who are left behind, like Mary, like Mom, also make an enormous sacrifice.

I went back home briefly tonight to bring a couple of framed pictures of myself with the Holy Father. I know they will make Mom happy and proud. She asked me to write out my new “title” or position in the Society, because she finds it hard to remember (and let’s face it: “General Councilor and Regional Assistant for East Asia and Oceania” is a mouthful). I know that she will want to tell her friends and our relatives about me. If that makes her happy, I am glad.

Before I left, she asked me to bless her. I said a prayer aloud while I lightly placed my hands on her head, and I was grateful that, after the blessing, the mood lightened, and she smiled as she told me to go and get a good night’s sleep before my trip the next day. When I blessed her, I asked God to keep her in good health, to give her peace of heart and mind, and to help her always to trust in his love. It is a prayer I will make very often and with much love and gratitude in the days to come.