Tears ...

TEARS running along her checkbones, when my mother was carried back at home, into the sitting room in November last year.
Perhaps they were her tears of joys: She knew she was finally at home, among her children ...




IN THE hospital 30 kilometers away, we could only see her a few minutes once a day. Every time waiting at the entrance of the intensive cases, I saw some people carried away to be died at home. It should be terrible lonely for her there, hearing people dying around her days by days, hours by hours !.
It should be a terrible fearness for her, thinking of passing away among strangers ...


I SAW her tears for the first time many years ago, at the height of the war.
We had to move into the town about ten kilometers away, because of fightings days after days, nights after nights. At the last moment before moving, I found her sitting crying alone behind the house, plenty of tears were running out from her eyes.
Looking at her, I could never forget that moment: they were not the eyes of hates or sorrows, but that of unkowning, of non-understanding , as if she was asking of the existence of God ...

LOOKING at her now, no body could imagine that from such a little body, eleven people were born, growing up, and going everywhere in the world. She was really much smaller and shorter than I usually thought !
Looking at her, I saw the long nights sleepless under terrible sounds of weapons,I saw a whole period of our bloody history...



IN MY FAMILY , she was one of the last Witnesses from the most bloody time in humain history. In One life-time, She saw French Legionairs: Frenchs, Turks, Algiers ...
She saw Japanse occupation troops. She saw American soldiers ...
She saw Capitalism and She saw Communism ...

NEVER before, we were weaponed with all kinds of Imaginations from the thinking minds: We distinguished each others not only by AK 47 and M16 automatic rifles or right and wrong, we also identified each others not as humain beings, but by all kinds of Categories invented by the thinking minds: Communist, Capitalist, Liberations, Rich, Poor, Much money, No money,Intellectuals, Coolies, Democrats, Totalitarians ...




ALONG a few kilometers of the village road from my house, tens of people (almost everyone) at my age were killed by fightings ! Looking at her, I saw my mother walking from the frontdoor to the backdoor one terrible night in 1968, and then back to the frontdoor again, between fightings, listening to everything outside, trying to protect us from the violence.

I also saw her visiting me in the concentration camp one morning in 1978, middle in the forest...



HOURS by hours, her face was less and less tense: She was in Peace now, among her children ...
Did she still have something more to do? Perhaps cooking, washing, cleaning the house or waiting some late-home-coming children middle in the night ?
Nobody know !...

Was there anything she wanted so much in her life but she could never achieve?
Nobody know ! ...

She was always busy with her children, watching them growing up in the world of violence, did she want so many children that she could never have a few moment for herself?
Nobody know !...


WHAT WERE THEN HER AMBITIONS, HER DESIRES ?

Nobody could ever know ...

PERHAPS the strange languages of Ambitions and Desires did never belong to her: She merely wanted to be a very simple woman with her family, taking care of her husband, raising her children, watching them growing up as decent persons...

Ten of years ago, She was born as an unkown being without thinking and she was passing away now also also as an unkown being, without any Categories, leaving behind many children in this Reality ...



TODAY Imaginations and Reasonings ceased to exist in her mind, I believed !.
For her, Time and Space were fading away: She knew Her long-life fighting to survive was over by now !.
She knew she was going to the next journey alone, without her children ...
She knew it was Time of Truth finally, It was Time of letting go everything, to be back to the Oneness...

She was being more and more in Peace hours by hours, as if she was finally reconciled with God and found her way Home, as if She was sleeping, not wanting to say anything ...




AT 7 A.M in the early morning of the fourth day at home, my mother took her last breath in this Reality. Seeing for the last time some tears running from her eyes, I said to my Fourth Sister:
- The Fourth Sister, dry mother's tears, please ...





To my Mother ,

© November 2000 ,
Nguyen Sau Rieng