Our Mama

Thank you everyone for being here today. I am Anthony Dizon and I am honored to have the opportunity to speak for a few minutes about my Mama, our Mama, whose life we are celebrating here today together.

Mama would be very pleased and grateful to see that you all could make it here this morning to share in this with us, as it was her family and friends who were the most important focus of her life. It was also your continued support, well wishes and prayers which were so valuable to her and to the family during her difficult times.

In addition to your presence here, we have received many, many expressions of sympathy, by phone calls, cards, e-mails, text messages, flowers, as well as from family and friends who were able to come to the viewing yesterday and the other day but couldn’t be here with us today.

Before I go on to celebrate Mama and what she stood for I must share with you the reality of what life was like for Mama and the family since she was first diagnosed with Alzheimer's about 3 years ago. Of course, nobody suffered more than Mama, but we all shared my mother’s pain. It was like we were all on trial.

At any one point, as a family, we were in denial, we were angry, or we were depressed. And there was conflict. We disagreed with the doctor’s and nurse’s findings. We didn’t always agree with each other on a course of action. It was a confusing moment.

In the end I felt we all put up a real good fight. We did what we could do, Together! Mama was showered with love and care by everyone.

I could talk for hours and provide numerous examples demonstrating her remarkable independence, including, of course, her strength to carry on being around us after my father passed away in 1990.

Her generosity with her time, her energy, her advice, and in so many other ways provided invaluable support to a remarkable number of people. She not only cared for 5 daughters and 2 sons, she found ways to also care for a lot of her grandchildren and great grandchildren.

My mother had an extraordinary ability to make each of us feel stronger and more confident in our own identity, giving us our own sense of independence and mental toughness which, speaking for myself, has been such an asset in so many ways in my life.

The one incident I would never forget with Mama was when I got my very first paycheck here in the US. (2 weeks of pay with overtime – still a very small amount back then). Anyway, I came to her and said, "Ma, you can have this." Right away, she gave me advice on how I should learn how to save and value what I have worked for. I can’t remember now if Mama ended up keeping that first paycheck, or if I saved it, or if my father spent it – as he was a spender. But from that day on, at that early stage of my adult life, Mama showed me the importance and value of hard work.

Mama is meticulous on how she cares for her personal belongings. Her clothes are folded and stored neatly in her closets. She likes to keep the house especially her room clean all the time – unfortunately for my wife and my 2 sons, I am just as meticulous as my mother.

She liked to hide her important stuff in a way that no one could think of. But when the illness started, our weekend visits became a treasure hunt game for the family trying to find where she hid them because she couldn’t remember where they were. We find it for her so she can hide it again.

These memories along with many others will live in our hearts forever.

I will always be extremely proud to call myself the son of Mama.

Mama, I am going to miss you so much! Truth is I already miss you.

Love your youngest son,

Anthony