[Visuals by Seyyed Llata, Senior Designer, and Vijith Pulikkal, Assistant Product Manager]
It’s been said that people tend to remember the good memories more accurately than the bad. It’s best known as the "Pollyanna principle".
Is it a form of escapism?
No.
Quite unknowingly, I've lived by it, and it works. In April, my mum contracted COVID so severe she was rushed to the hospital. I was more than 7,000 km away.
Though she recovered and was discharged, she died 8 days later. Her heart gave in. She was 79. I flew home to the Philippines from Dubai via Cebu-Clark, only to be herded into a quarantine facility for days. No customary last rites I thought we owed her, and as per our community tradition. And no long goodbyes.
My youngest brother, Wing (our only sibling in a brood of four present by her deathbed), brought home Mama's ashes in an urn from the crematorium. We can only witness from afar, from a small phone screen then. On January, 2, 2022, a Sunday, we brought the urn to the colombarium, Mama's final resting place. She has left us, and that brought immense sorrow.
In my heart and mind, the only proper response: acceptance, no matter how difficult.
The death of a loved one is profoundly heart-breaking; it forces us to take a certain posture. Given this reality, I dig it completely, the present may be bad and sad.
The death of a loved one is profoundly heart-breaking; it forces us to take a certain posture. Given this reality, I dig it completely, the present may be bad and sad.
There's a flipside: gratefulness — that feeling of appreciation for having experienced love, kindness, help, countless favours, or other types of generosity, to the giver. A little "thank you" note each day, by doing things conscientiously in response to her great love, is the least I can do.
Gratefulness helps us form a bridge to the past, and a hope for good things in the future. It's a wellspring for scooping up happy hormones, and it's there for all of us to take. Our memory is the limit.
When tragedy strikes, it’s easy to give in to discouragement, or hopelessness. It turns out we do find it easier to look back at the positive things more accurately than negative ones. Why not use it to our favour?
There's a flipside: gratefulness — that feeling of appreciation for having experienced love, kindness, help, countless favours, or other types of generosity, to the giver. A little "thank you" note each day, by doing things conscientiously in response to her great love, is the least I can do.
Good memories of my mum are my treasured possessions — one I could relive with no quota, and without fail. Memories that keep the heart on fire.
How can death be 'positive'?
It's a conundrum: how can the death of a loved one be positive? But now, I clearly remember better things that I choose to remember. The passing away of my mother, Teresita, came more than 45 years after a life-threatening pregnancy of a still-born baby, who would have been my fourth sibling.
Her condition then led to the removal of her entire reproductive system — including her two ovaries and fallopian tube — by a local specialist, a certain ‘Doctora De Castro’.
Mama's story has it that Doctora De Castro had told her she’s not supposed to have children AT ALL — given what the good doctor saw as the "abnormal" form of my mum's reproductive system.
That in itself is a miracle; and it lives in us today. Mama had the four of us — eldest brother Manoy Elden, my sister Nene Kalay (second child), myself, and our youngest sibling, Wing.
For the complicated and successful surgery, Doctora de Castro charged her "next to nothing”. In the Philippines, a teacher's salary is not much. When she enquired about the bill, or doctor's fee, I clearly remember Mama's story. Post-surgery, her doctor told Mama: “Danon ko na saimo” (in the local dialect, it roughly translates: “It’s my help for you”).
Years later, I only heard my Mama saying that “Doctora de Castro” had already passed away. In silence, I said a prayer for the angel with a scalpel, who I have come to believe helped my Mama live another joyful 45 years.
Looking back
There are countless others. Example: Our mother was a professional teacher; she was our everyday teach. She knew her children well, our failings, aches, pains and successes.
Her post-op years were providential. She guided, served, implored, reminded us (repeatedly) — “Avoid vice”, “Remember the Golden Rule”, “Love knowledge”, “While others are starving, be grateful for what's on the table”. Gems we wear with us in life, and for life.
She was generous with encouragement. “Wow, gwapohunon!” ("handsome boy!”) she would exclaim, without fail, each time I get my haircut — even when I thought the barber did a lousy job (which was most of the time).
She drilled in us: turn difficulties into opportunities; let hardship be your best teacher. Mama, in a way, was a Pollyanna prozelytiser, too. She reminds me of what I later read about the legendary US industrialist Henry Ford, who said: “Whether you think you can, or you think you can't – you're right."
A person can choose to be amazed by the morning sun each day — or be haunted by the nightmares that rob him of sleep. I can opt to be encouraged by her words even today, or get stalled by negative self-talk.
Amazed
Our life was never perfect, to be sure. It was tough raising a family in rural Philippines, yet our Mama — and Papa — managed to raise us well. I never knew how hard parenthood is till I became a parent myself. Yet they made our upbringing beautiful. Our life today is because of our parents' youth well-spent nurturing us yesterday. Now, it's our turn to pay it forward, with our own children.
No. Psychologists say that for individuals diagnosed to be suffering from depression, panic attacks or anxiety disorder, the Pollyanna principle is of no help. The reason: they tend to either have more depressive realism or a negativity bias.
The negativity bias, also known as the "negativity effect”, is the notion that, even when of equal intensity, things of a more negative nature have a greater effect on one's psychological state and processes than neutral or positive things.
Amid the difficulties of old age, my mum’s memory started failing her. I witnessed how her eyes would turn blank when I asked her: “How are you feeling today, Mama?” Ill health and failing memory are realities those of us who are lucky enough to get there must all face.
Perhaps my Mama, when she gave me those blank stares, was holding on to those super memories instead.
As I reflect on her life, I found this to be true: It turns out that in contrast to negative feedback, which is self-regulating, inner positivity and positive feedback mechanisms are self-perpetuating.
Given life's unburnished realities in the here and now, it helps to face each day guided by those self-perpetuating memories of happy yesteryears, yet still be excited about the future, with all the challenges it may bring, including old age.
Self-perpetuating memories
As for Mama, one can heartily repeat Da Vinci’s refrain: “As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so does a well-spent life brings happy death.”
When this pandemic is all over, I will still choose to remember those heart-warmers under Mama's tender loving care. Even the ones that I don't know well enough, but sure felt enough, while inside her womb. And no one can take those nuggets away, unless I let them — or perhaps when my own ability to remember things starts fading away.
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