Letter to My Mother , livre ebook

Marshall Cavendish International - Felix Cheong

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121 pages

English

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Many songs and stories have been written about how important mothers are to their children. But what story would you tell if you put pen to paper? Perhaps things you had learned from her that made you who you are today. Perhaps express your gratitude for the sacrifices she had made for you. Or perhaps matters left unresolved that have since become a thorn in your relationship. Insightful and heart-wrenching, packed with poignant anecdotes. These letters testify to the nurturing love that mothers have for their children. In this collection of mini-essays edited by award-winning author Felix Cheong, sons and daughters write letters to their mother about their relationships and articulate what has often not been expressed.

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Publié par	Marshall Cavendish International
Date de parution	01 janvier 0001
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9789814974349
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

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How and what would you write to someone who gave birth to you? It s the beautiful premise that threads this heartfelt compendium of letters by sons and daughters addressed to mothers, some living and others who have passed on. On one level, it s an ode to the importance of parental love and the bond which still binds across time and space, even when, no, especially when things get tough. On the other, it s retrospection of a deeper kind, a mirror for self-reflexivity, to really see clearly, warts and all, without any pretence.
YEOW KAI CHAI Poet and Former Director, Singapore Writers Festival
Here are stories of a-witnessing in so far as the child watches and bears witness to the mother. Some stories will leave you in wonderment and not a little envious. If you were a mother, you might even panic at some. Will you be seen as the mother is seen here? There is no rulebook for mothers, and, if there is one it should best be eschewed. For the most heart-breaking stories are the ones that stick strictly to rules. These letters are most illuminating when they speak to the tenuous link between mother and child aspirations/expectations and reality. It is a privilege to be allowed access to them.
DANA LAM Writer/Performer, Still Life (2019), and Associate Artist with Checkpoint Theatre

Text individual contributors as credited in each work
2021 Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) Private Limited
Published in 2021 by Marshall Cavendish Editions
An imprint of Marshall Cavendish International

All rights reserved
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National Library Board, Singapore Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Names: Cheong, Felix, editor.
Title: Letter to my mother: words of love and perspectives on growing up from sons and daughters / edited by Felix Cheong.
Description: Singapore : Marshall Cavendish Editions, [2021]
Identifiers: OCN 1242596168 | eISBN 978 981 4974 34 9
Subjects: LCSH: Children-Correspondence. | Mothers. | Mother and child. Classification: DDC 306.8743-dc23
Printed in Singapore
Cover design by Adithi Khandadai
This book is dedicated to all parents, in the hope that these shared experiences will inspire and shape your own parenting journey.
Contents
Foreword
F ELIX C HEONG
Love Without Borders
I RENE N G
When Little Daughters Become Little Women
S HARDA H ARRISON
Guilt, Survived
C HERYL C HARLI T AN
I Am My Mother s Son
W ILLIAM P HUAN
A Magic Pearl
L YDIA K WA
Dear Jenny
R EGINA D E R OZARIO
Thank You, Mummy
R OSE M ARIE S IVAM
Joy. Luck. Club
G EORGETTE Y U
11 Years
Z URAIDAH M OHAMED
Mother s Mother Tongue
G WEE L I S UI
Don t Hedge Your Bets
W AHID A L M AMUN
Now and Always
J EAN T AN
My Mom, My World
J O -A NNE L EE
Mama, Live
F AITH N G
Rest if You are Tired
M ARTHA T ARA L EE
Letter to My Mother, Lim Siew Lian Veronica
B EVERLY M ORATA G RAFTON
The Battle for My Left Hand
C HARMAINE D ENG
A Necessary Detour
N ANNY E LIANA
My Mother and Her Unprintable Life
C HRISTINE C HIA
Letter to My Mother
T ANIA D E R OZARIO
Foreword
Felix Cheong
When was the last time you spoke to your mother? Do you remember the drift of that conversation, its turns and tide, its tone and tales? What would you have edited out if you had recorded it and replayed it as a memory?
I never got round to a last conversation with Mum in her final days. Discharged from Changi General Hospital on Christmas Eve, 2019, she was living on borrowed time, with only one lung doing the work of two. Even hooked up to an oxygen tank, she was gasping, like a diver drowning in fresh air. There was no float she could hold onto to keep her body from sinking into itself.
By then, pneumonia had already widowed her. Dad, her husband of 56 years, died on December 12, barely a fortnight before. And pneumonia would soon orphan my brothers and me on January 3.
How swiftly death comes, and how mute.
Not that Mum had much to say. Her words had already been cut down to size since 2015, when vascular dementia began eating her from the inside out. Words were precious and few, more so now that every breath was a fight to stay awake, stay the execution. Whatever she could manage was guttural, often cries of pain as her diapers was being changed.
When I visited her on New Year s Day, she was pale and weak, weakened still by a lack of appetite. She could barely sit up. Her body was shutting down for the long sleep ahead.
How are you feeling? I asked in Cantonese.
Aaah, Mum said, raspy. Very pain.
I, the writer-son she had been proud of, who would dedicate his next two books to his late parents, could offer no words of comfort at that point. All the poems I had ever written about death, its long blade and its long wake trailing into the night, were mute. No lyrical flourishes could have explained how her husband had slipped away without one last look; no language came close to breaching the divide between the living and dying.
I sat with Mum for a while, and left soon after. The next time I sat by her side, her face was already cold but not stiff yet. Again, words failed me. I fell back on - and was held up in grace by - the Lord s Prayer, the Hail Mary and the Glory Be.
Borrowed words, but they burrowed deep.
Over the next few weeks, I would be haunted by what I did not manage to say to Mum. All the thanks I could have offered; all the memories I could have told her that I cherish; all the things she had taught me; all the sacrifices she had made to bring us up - and I said nothing.
At the far end of the long corridor of grief, I soon realised, stood regret. I met it, asked to be relieved of the burden but instead, it walked me down another long corridor where guilt awaited.
All I could do was visit Mum s niche, her urn next to Dad s, touch their picture gently and whisper my thanks, over and belatedly, till something broke up, broke down or broke away.
Whatever it was, however it did, almost three months after her passing, I dreamt of Mum:

DREAMING OF MUM
I dreamt of you last night, Mum.
I was piggybacking you, as you must have done with me once.
The day was dusk but felt like dawn.
The wind was light and so were you,
All spirit and spirited, the weight
Of being dead lifted, like an early Easter.
I was a little hunched, talking, in Cantonese,
A bit of this and a hunch about that, turning inanities
Inside out into a conversation.
It was like old times many times over.
You laughed often - can t remember why -
But it made the trudge uphill eventful.
I never got round to where we were heading.
Wakefulness snatched me
And left me knowing.
It is coming to the end of 100 days
Since you left without saying goodbye.
But this, I know, Mum.
You are now in a better place, as the clich goes.
This poem is tearing even as it finds its words,
Not from sadness or fear, but a dream-like insight
That you are safe, as free of ash and dust
As my dearest memory of your laugh.
I finally had that last conversation with Mum.
***
In this anthology of 20 letters, our contributors from all walks of life got to write their letter to their mother. To a man, and woman, they all found the task extremely difficult, probably the most painful and private thing they had ever put pen to paper (or fingers to screen). Many confessed afterwards they had to finish writing it in tears (as I did with this foreword).
For some of them, their mother had long passed away, so their letter became a requiem, a way to summon her memory, a callout that she had not been forgotten. For others whose mother is alive and well, their letter was a thank-you card for the years that gratitude had not been expressed in person. And for a handful, their letter was not so much peace talk as a negotiation with their past in which their mother s shadow was writ large.
Above all, Letter to My Mother is an honest, raw and emotional read. It is written with much love (and sometimes with its alter ego, hate) and humanity. And hopefully, after reading these letters, you will ask yourself the questions I had posed you earlier:

Felix (right) and his mother .
When was the last time you spoke to your mother? Do you remember the drift of that conversation, its turns and tide, its tone and tales? What would you have edited out if you had recorded it and replayed it as a memory?

Felix Cheong is the author of 19 books, including six volumes of poetry, a trilogy of satirical flash fiction and five children s picture books. His works have been nominated for the prestigious Frank O Connor Award and the Singapore Literature Prize. His latest work is a libretto written with comp