MANILA, Philippines - It was my first morning to awaken to a world without Mom, and, consciously, physically, I felt the burden of her loss weighing me down. Every movement was a struggle, like walking counter-stream in shallow water. Every effort of thought ran into an equivalent resistance. It all left me exhausted and weepy.

Apparently Mom died in her nap, for she somehow had managed the few steps from her bed to her breakfast table. The maids found her there, seated peacefully, her head hanging limp on one side, and thought she had bargained for a little more sleep. That was September 19. A call had shocked me awake even before the sun was wholly out.

Only two people had dared call me at that hour whom I could not but oblige?Mom and Dad. It was never a call that couldn?t wait, but Mom and Dad, as normal with people their age, had their own time zone. They slept early and short (as it happened, they also slept in separate homes, a situation that presented complications beyond phone calls), so that, while I was still in bed, they had had breakfast, been up a few hours, and become bored.

My brother and only sibling escaped their calls by the simple expedient of making himself reachable only by cellphone and taking calls selectively.

Normal advice

Although diabetic, Mom seemed in no immediate danger. She felt relatively good, did in fact look good. For one thing, she looked younger by easily a decade than her 85 years. But at any hour her calls were not easy to take. They were heavy with accusations, complaints and demands. Mercifully, they were brief, although, again, not seldom ending with a bang, triggered at her end sometimes by a perfectly normal daughterly advice that she get a medical checkup.

She just hated being made to face the possibility, one that becomes increasingly real and imminent with age, of doctors finding something in her: ?Bakit ka ba hanap nang hanap ng sakit? Sa edad kong ito, siguradong may makikita na.?

In time, though, Mom began to mellow and come around. On the 18th, she rang, sounding pleasant and energetic. She announced that for the next day her energies would be concentrated on bargain shopping: it was the eve of an SM sale.

True to an inexplicable reversal of roles I had been lately finding myself, I admonished her to avoid crowds and shopping.

?Obviously,? she replied excitedly and without the slightest trace of resentment, ?you?ve never been to an SM sale!?

?Just don?t go alone,? I said.

She promised, but said incidentally that she could no longer count on her main maid. The maid had left with her three children, she said, surely expecting the news to please me. The woman and her brats had been taking liberties with her in the way that opportunistic relatives might do. Mom said she had hired two replacements.

When I asked why the maid left suddenly, she said, dismissively, ?Jealousy!?

I concluded that it was one of those domestic affairs bound to bloom in overstaffed, underworked, communal households.

At any rate, my conversation with Mom was not at all unpleasant. It was even hilarious in parts, which made her passing a classic case of the proverbial thief in the night.

Ring of urgency

I ignored the first call of the morning after, but promptly took the second, coming as it did so close to the first that it gave a ring of urgency.

It was one of Mom?s new maids. ?Señorita Chit, huwag sana kayong mabibigla. . . .?

My husband and I rushed to St. Luke?s Hospital, but even before we could get there the resident emergency doctor called me on my cellphone pronouncing her dead.

She lay in one of those Emergency Room cubicles, and as I cupped her face in my hands and called to her, ?Mommy, Mommy!? she opened her eyes and gave me that look of relief you see in the desperately redeemed, before closing them again. Surely he saw that evidence of life, I pleaded with the doctor, who replied softly, but with professional certainty and finality, ?She just waited for you. She?s been dead since about six or seven.?

I sat there caressing her cold but still soft hand, which seemed, again, to have moved, prompting me to look up at my husband, who only shook his head as he helped me up and took me in his arms.

Feeling helpless, though now properly reoriented, I bent down on my beautiful mom and planted a kiss on her forehead, then asked for a priest.

Everything went smoothly. The wake, held for two nights at a Santuario de San Antonio chapel, and the funeral?her ashes were interred in a niche I had bought in the Santuario 20 years ago?were as simple as she would have wanted it: merienda food, no speeches.

Mom?s passing was no trouble at all for her family. The more I thought about it the more appreciative I became of her. And as the days went by, grief began to give way to gratitude and love. If there had been times she was not easy, she more than made up for it.

Certified hoarder

Mom was a certified hoarder. Going through her things brought amusement, surprise, and, of course, nostalgia. A lot of orphans are going to be happy to receive her collection of baby dolls with a wardrobe she had sewn herself. I even found a published poem extolling the generous heart she had shown in her charity work in my father?s district when he was congressman.

It was in Spanish, written for her by the late film director Luis Nolasco, whose widow remained her close friend until her death years ago.

For some strange reason, I brought home two of her favorite white dresses, one of which she wore in death. I could still visualize her wearing them. I hang them among my clothes.

Only Dad calls now, a few times a day, and invariably asks about Mom, and I tell him the whole story of her passing each time. I am myself helped somehow by the retelling in coming to terms with the reality of her permanent loss.

When the Santuario office called me the other day to say the brass vase was ready, I went to the crypt with fresh flowers, which she didn?t like: ?Nagtatapon ka lang ng pera, hija.? She preferred artificial flowers because they ?last forever and look just as real, anyway.?

Recalling all that, I found myself smiling through copious tears as I shined the brass letters of her name and the dates of her birth and death. After arranging the flowers, I pulled a chair, sat there, and talked to her. I thanked her for being my mom and, as I did, I felt the burden of grief ease.

Since then, I thank her whenever I remember her, which is often in the course of an ordinary day, and I never fail to find great solace in that.

I remember asking an old aunt who had lost her husband many years before, ?When do you forget??

?You never do,? she replied, smiling the sweet smile of remembrance.