MOTHER'S DAY, MOTHER'S LIFE II

Year 1948.

A male centred culture in a third world country. An 18 year old girl named Violeta is accepted in Medical School. There were only two other women studying medicine at that time. A handsome 6th semester student notices the strong, dark haired woman and gets closer and closer to her. They are seen together very often, and some months later, he asks her to marry him.

They get engaged, but Violeta wants to finish her career before marriage. He decides to work as an intern in a private hospital, to wait for her and graduate together, which they do. They eventually get married 10 days after the two young physicians entered the college of surgeons, after 6 years of betrothal.

Five years have gone by since that day. Every morning, three little girls of 46, 28 and 10 months old fill the house. The 30 year old physician has brought her mother to live in when she became a widow 1 year ago.

And all of a sudden, life has a twist. In a tragic car accident, the handsome young father is killed, leaving Violeta alone, with her back injured as she was also involved in the accident, with 3 very young daughters and her own mother to take care of.

During the 6 months Violeta was kept hospitalized, she sells most of her belongings to be able to feed her family. When she recovers, she leaves the town where her husband passed away. After having accepted a new position at a hospital in the major city of her little country, she wins a scholarship and travels to North America (Mexico and USA). Upon her return four years later, she is the only doctor specialized on anesthesia for neurosurgery in the country, and thus, is designed head director of the anaesthesiology department in the major hospital of the country. She was the only female and the head of the team.

Violeta raises her 3 girls and the three of them become physicians. The photography above is her favourite. “My three doctors and I”, she often brags about, showing off the picture that was made with us wearing white lab coats because she wanted it to be that way.

34 years after her husband died, she decides to retire and to re-marry. Her labour is done, in accordance to her. The picture above shows her with six of her seven grandkids.

I was not able to post about you on Mother’s day, but as I said before, there is not such thing as mother’s day, but a mother’s life. And this is a tribute to your life, mother mine, the bravest woman I have ever known. I love you beyond words.

~ May 15, 2007 ~