The most beautiful feet

By

AFEW minutes after she breathed her last, I embraced my mother, kissed her on the cheek (it felt silky, flawless), rubbed my nose on hers (a childhood thing), and whispered into her good ear how much I love her and how grateful I will always be for everything she had done for me and my siblings.

I stroked her right arm, which had become sort of immobile after the last of a series of mini-strokes; her flesh was frightfully cold, but it was tender still, rigor mortis had not set in. My mother had not trimmed or colored her hair for more than two years, so on her death bed, she was crowned with a glorious silver cloud that glistened and billowed all over her pillows. I cut a strand and placed it in a velvet box, for posterity.

Then, I uncovered her feet, they were resting on a red cushion looking very much alive, and not a single nail had been discolored by death. Her feet were plump and rosy; it was hard to believe they were the extremities of a soul-less body. Tenderly, I massaged the most beautiful feet God had ever made.

Her manicurist friend Nina came a few days before Mommy’s 96th birthday. She wanted her favorite client to look well during the intimate family gathering of Mommy’s Cruz and Nakpil offsprings, her stepdaughter, favorite Guerrero nieces and nephews, and a few surviving friends and colleagues. After Mrs. Macasaet’s beauty salon closed down, Nina would come twice a month to give Mommy the usual manicure and pedicure. She once told me that she had never seen such perfectly beautiful and unblemished feet as my mother’s. Why did I think she had such beautiful feet, Nina asked?

Perhaps it was because my mother loved walking around the house and garden bare-footed. She had bedroom slippers of embroidered Chinese silk but she hardly wore them; there were garden sandals of varied designs; all were barely used. She never wore shoes that pinched, nor very high heels as she was already much too tall for her generation. As far back as I can remember, she always had a home-service manicurist, one of the few luxuries she allowed herself. But, I am convinced it is genetic, she must have inherited beautiful feet from one of our ancestors.

Suddenly, I realized I was alone in the room talking to my mother as if she were still alive. The Creator has come for her, I told myself and I would like to believe she is reunited with the love of her life, my father, Ismael Cruz, Sr. That was a consoling thought because at that moment I felt that the bottom of my cozy world was falling off.

My son Leon came in the room. Please tell your uncle to come in here, I said. Apparently, my brother had dropped by the evening before when Mommy was still alive, awake and responsive, so that was how he wanted to remember her. I understood; I did not insist. Leon said the undertakers had arrived and were ready to take Mommy to the mortuary. Her doctor had just signed the death certificate. Mommy had left us written instructions about what we were supposed to do and not do in the event of her death. She did not want to be attached to any machine that prolonged life; she wanted to be cremated on the very day she died. I wept uncontrollably, on my son’s shoulder, when they put my mother in a body bag.

At the crematorium, my son and I and my nephew Carlo had one last look. She was sleeping peacefully; they had combed her silver crowning glory. I kissed my mother goodbye and thanked her again for everything. While waiting in the anteroom for her ashes, I turned on my iphone and looked for the photo I had taken of her feet, the most beautiful in the world. She used to say it was a pity I did not inherit them “Had the judges in Long Beach seen your feet,” she loved to tease, “you would not have won that beauty title!” (ggc1898@gmail.com)