At the moment, I am with my mother as her companion since I returned to the Philippines in January. My sister recently died in December. It was a sudden death and my family was not able to prepare. My sister was the main caregiver of my mother. I am with her while waiting for my thesis process to move. I have many realizations living with my elderly mother. When I lived with her before, she was much younger. Now is a different experience.

I learned how to live with a regular and predictable routine according to schedules of meals, work, rest, and medicines. My life has a slower pace to respect my mother’s. I also learned how to respect my body, according to its capacity because that is what I observed. When my mom is hypertensive, she needs rest. When a sample is needed for the laboratory, I need to wait until she is ready. No demands to push further. I learned how to be patient.

I learned how to choose the essentials, especially spending quality time, listening to family stories, gardening and simply being. I also learned how to take one day at a time and to live in the moment.

I never envisioned a simple lifestyle since I joined the congregation. I have been very ambitious and constantly looking for another project after the other. It seems to me that God is telling me at this time to slow down and to focus more on the interiority of being an RNDM as a way of being missionary.

Pope Francis teaches us about the necessity of a slower pace of life, he says,

“Old age certainly imposes a slower pace: but it is not merely a time of inertia. Indeed, the measure of these rhythms opens up, for all, spaces of meaning of life, unheard of by the obsession with haste. Losing contact with the slower rhythms of old age closes up these spaces to everyone.”¹

I am aware that this is only a temporary arrangement. However, this experience is teaching me lessons to carry forward on my missionary life journey.