Recalling the indomitable spirit of Mummy on what would have been her 100th b’day

The flower bedecked month of May was her favourite, not because her birthday was part of it but as it was dedicated to Mary, the Mother of Christ, and a great fan she was of her.

Mary Philomena Elizabeth Antoinette Cecilia Hettiarachchi whose lengthy name we joked about, would have turned 100 on May 30, but died four years short in 2017.

Phil, as she was known, was my mother and the magnitude of her grit and strength became evident when she came to live with us in the last 10 years of her life, after Daddy’s death.

My earliest childhood memories of Mummy are of hearing colourful tales about birds including crows which were “holding conferences” every evening or flying hither and thither around the huge water tank near our home in Anuradhapura, as she fed me my dinner of mashed potatoes with lots of butter, I love even to this day. Then, of course, wisps of memories of looking for shells in a heap of sand in the garage in our home in Anuradhapura, unknowingly having crossed the path of a polonga (Russell’s viper) and finding that Mummy had followed soon after and dropped an iron on the deadly snake.

Her unshakeable belief that her insistence that the family recite the rosary before one of my brothers looked for a “hissing” rat in a disused cooker, was the saving grace from being bitten by a cobra which turned out to be the rat.

Mummy, smartly clad in her Kandyan saree with matching slippers and a konde without a hair out of place, was a teacher of English and more to her students at three convent schools in Anuradhapura and Colombo.

At the end of each school day, her voice would be hoarse, having taught all the periods without idling and unwittingly inhaling the chalk dust (those were the days of blackboards and white chalk), while carrying home a pile of books to be corrected overnight and returned to her beloved children.

Meticulously she would draw up “schemes” for her lessons, her handwriting whether in English or Sinhala, beautiful.

Tuition after school was not tuition, for there was no fee involved.

Those were also the days of two long sessions of school with a lunch-break in-between. In the second convent, her students were from different backgrounds, the well-to-do and the not-so-well-to-do. She knew the children who came each morning without even a scrap of breakfast and who would slink out of class during the lunch-break, whether shine or rain, and sit under the spreading Mara tree, as they simply had no food. Mummy decided that she would eat her lunch in her classroom instead of the staff room and without even knowing what was happening the children were enjoying a picnic – each one’s lunch box laid open and Mummy sharing whatever she had, with the not-so-well-to-do children also getting a meal, sans a single word about charity.

Personally, she was very much a partner, taking in her stride Daddy’s unconventional behaviour with equanimity – whether having exotic pets such as a sambhur and a leopard in our home or taking the family’s cat in a basket on our numerous train journeys (Mummy was entitled to valuable railway warrants).

When Daddy stood up for what was right, confronting rioters intent on harming people during the infamous 1958 communal riots or brought home terrified Irrigation Engineers from their stations and kept them in our home until they could be escorted back to Jaffna safely, Mummy was with him all the way.

More recently, in her early 80s, when thugs broke into their home in Nugegoda in broad daylight and demanded her jewellery after tying up Daddy, she had grabbed the double-barrel shotgun in their room before being overpowered by the robbers.

Never a word about pain or discomfort would she utter and we did not even realize what agony she (in her 90s) would have been in, having sprained her back, on our last family trip, until my sister noticed a slight grimace. It was thereafter that we were able to get her a wheelchair whenever the walks were long on that fun-filled journey from Colombo to Dambulla and then onto Habarana with an evening of interaction with the ‘Gathering’ of elephants at Kaudulla thrown in. Seeing all the babies among about 300-400 elephants enthralled her as she and Daddy had come face-to-face with many wild elephants on numerous journeys from Anuradhapura to Trincomalee in the 1950s and 60s through Habarana which was then a remote hamlet in the midst of the wilds. The one and only time that she held my hand tight and told me she was in pain was when at 94 she fractured her femur (the thigh bone) while walking. She came out of surgery for implantation of a pace-maker without fuss and also underwent partial replacement of the hip bone without much trouble.

To her 14 grandchildren, she was the gentle ‘Achchi’ or ‘Phil’, which she preferred to be called, as even at the time of her death she had only a few silver threads among the black in her hair.

The love of poetry and literature came both from Mummy and Daddy and I marvel at the talent passed onto the grandchildren. She could also play the piano and sing which is strongly evident not only in my sister but also the grandchildren.

Whenever some of us suffer severe migraine attacks we know for sure that it is something passed down by her and wonder how she managed her home with six children (four sons and two daughters) and work life with such debilitating headaches without a murmur.

Cashew nuts, different types of cheese, sweet wine, love cake, Breudher, prawns, chutneys, sauces, pickles and kadachoru that we relish and the love of flowers, we know from where we have got.

How Mummy, who had been running her own house, along with Daddy even at 86, adjusted when she came to live with us was amazing. She would have missed the morning and evening walks to the top of the road where they chatted with passers-by including young monks from a nearby temple. The nine cats they had adopted would follow them up to a point until told to go back home and the faithful dog they had at that time answered only to the name, ‘Come Here’.

In our home, constant were the battles I waged with her for eating sauce with every meal or roaming around with the maid in our neighbours’ gardens picking flowers (for I feared she would have a fall) and she would go on strike until my husband spoke to her gently and told her how much like Daddy I was with the same impatience or whenever my brother-in-law was around to pacify her.

Long chats she would have with my two children’s friends and exchange fist-bumps with my son’s classmates. She objected vociferously when I disciplined my children and threatened to go back to her home claiming that I was being unfair.

It is four years since her death and I thought by now I would not miss her anymore, consoling myself that she lived a full life of 96 years. But I am wrong – anxious thoughts assail me. Did I do enough for Mummy, but most of all did I spend enough time with her? As remorse engulfs me, one thing is certain: I miss her!

Kumi