My Mother Didn’t Say I Love You

Originally published in Hyphen

My mother didn't say, "I love you."

I don't know when she stopped. Maybe I outgrew the words, the way kids outgrow training wheels and kisses on the first day of school.

Or maybe I love you's were never part of our vocabulary at all. I seem to recall trying it out once, rolling the syllables on my tongue like an unfamiliar food, trying to get the taste of them. "I love you," I called, climbing onto the school bus. She smiled and waved, but her lips stayed tight.

Whatever it was, the practice never took hold. Telling my mother I love her would be as awkward as when we got to the naked painting scene in Titanic when I was 12. To hear her say it would mean something had gone terribly wrong.

This silence set us apart from other families.

"Love you," my friends called to their parents as they trotted out the door or hung up the phone. The phrase was used so frequently I wondered if it had lost its meaning, or if it ever had meaning.  

My mother didn't say, "I love you." What did that mean?

Sometimes I thought she didn't love me. Sometimes I thought I didn't love her.

We were always butting heads. My childhood felt like a reel of perpetual punishment: getting grounded, locked out of the house or in the garage, sent upstairs without dinner, ignored for hours or days.

In periods of banishment to my room, I read Roald Dahl books, wondering if my parents were as mean as the ones in Matilda, or if I could escape home for a dream land with the Big Friendly Giant.

She insisted on good grades, but I didn't see the point. She insisted on learning tennis, but I hated sports. She wanted me to become a doctor or lawyer or businessman, but I wanted to work at a video store, get really good at guitar, then join a famous band.

We grew closer when I left home for college in Boston. But even then there were no I love you's. She berated me for not taking business classes; I told her I was thinking about dropping out to live in a van.

As I settled into adulthood, my phone calls home grew more frequent, the bickering less.

I remember the last words I said to her in person, in the Philippines, where she'd returned to her hometown. I was heading out the door to catch my flight.

"See you next time," I said. But I remember thinking I should say, "I love you."

She had a sudden heart attack the next morning, a complication of cancer, and died.

Afterwards, my family had to break the news to people. My mother was a hard woman; she hadn't told anyone she was sick.

My friends emailed me with funny memories about how tough she was on me, especially regarding school.

"I would always think, 'Man, I'm glad my mom's not like that,'" one friend wrote. But there was another theme: Love. She loved you so much, my friends told me.

"I remember us growing up feeling so rebellious," the friend continued. "But all along our parents wanted what was best for us."

At her funeral my family asked me to say something. I wrote a poem. It went like this:

My mother didn’t say I love you. Instead she said Do your homework and, Don’t be late for dinner. That’s how we knew she cared. Her hair was short like her temper when our grades were bad, her smile warm like the pancit she cooked on our birthdays. When we left home for college she didn’t say I’m worried. Instead she sent mail: care packages, they’re called. Microwaveable rice and instant noodles, because we didn’t know how to make pancit. When she got sick she didn’t say I’m scared. Instead she made jokes and refused to take her medicine. She treated cancer like it was a cold. That’s how we knew she was okay. My mother didn’t say goodbye. She didn’t have to. But we said it: We said goodbye, and I love you. 

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