Mother Mary Catherine
Mother Mary Catherine
Intrying to understand my other mother — my aunt, my mother’s younger sister, Mary Catherine Jayawardane — I often felt as though I had wandered into a little maze of my own making. There were twists and turns everywhere, each one asking me to pause and look at her life from a different angle. What had hurt her? What had shaped her? Why did she choose some paths so boldly and leave others untouched?
She was so different from my own mother, Mary Susan, who slipped away quietly in her sleep at seventy-eight. I knew my mother for only a brief portion of my life, for I left home when she was just forty-two — not to another town or district, but far beyond her sight, to another country. And even before that, I had been away for four long years in a Christian Brothers’ boarding school, learning the loneliness of dormitories and the comfort of letters from home.
Trying to look at Mary Catherine without the colours of my complicated bond with my mother helped me understand them both a little better. Perhaps, without realising it, they turned me into a traveller — someone always looking for meaning far from home and the country of his childhood.
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A nun — that was Mary Catherine’s earliest dream, a small one, but held close to her heart. What life allowed her to become was something different: a nurse. And a good one too. She spoke English with quiet confidence, and she wrote it even better. I remember that vividly.
During my toddler years, she was the bridge between my stern grandfather and me — softening his voice, tempering his rules, and holding my world together with her gentle presence. She worked at the hospital in Ragama, perched high on a sun-bleached hill. From that height she must have seen the railway tracks gleaming like silver wires, and the coconut groves rippling under the afternoon wind.
She lived with my grandfather then, earning her own living, buying little treats for herself and me, and dutifully sharing her wages to keep him comfortable in his old age. Among relatives and villagers she was known as Sudu Nona — the fair lady. And fair she was, in more ways than one.
Their home was my second home. Whenever she visited my mother, she unfailingly took me back with her. Those visits were music to my ears. My grandfather’s large house, the vast garden alive with butterflies and flowers, and Catherine’s unbroken attention — these were the treasures of my earliest years.
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Everything changed the year my grandfather died. I was six; she was just twenty-one. The house that once echoed with his commanding footsteps grew suddenly hollow. The rooms felt too large, the nights too long. Mary Catherine, who had walked briskly between hospital and home, now stood alone, as though the world had quietly shifted beneath her feet.
A few months later she moved in with us. My mother had a new baby — my little sister — and Catherine’s help made the household easier. She and I shared a room; she became my haven. On weekends I went with her to churches, convents, and visiting relatives. I loved her with the deep, unreasoned affection only children know. She was all gentleness, all unconditional love. I thrived on it.
But life, with its odd sense of timing, had other plans.
Arguments began — my mother, my uncle, Catherine, all entangled in the tension surrounding a man she had begun to see. I was too young to understand what adults found so difficult and shameful, but not too young to feel the weight of the sadness that settled on Catherine. She cried often, and sometimes refused her meals. I loved her too much not to feel every bit of her sorrow.
Then one day, without a word, she left. She vanished — eloped with the man she loved. Our home exploded into chaos. My mother cried endlessly, furious and wounded. Search parties were sent out. But there was no sign of Catherine.
For me, the worst part was not the adults’ anger but the loss of my dearest companion. It broke my small world. For months I wondered if I had done something wrong. My mother’s bitterness only deepened my confusion.
Years passed. I learned to live with her absence. I heard rumours — she was in a distant town, she had children. At fifteen, I secretly hoped I might find her one day.
Then, on a bright afternoon, she appeared at our doorstep — unexpected, almost like a vision. The joy of seeing her again was too big to hide. She held a small boy in her arms and wore a thin, worn saree that told its own story of hardship. My mother, still nursing old wounds, scolded her. But I only saw the aunt I had loved.
Catherine quietly opened the old cupboard in my room — her cupboard, kept untouched all those years — and took out her old clothes. She had three children now, and a fourth she raised from her husband’s first marriage. They lived in extreme poverty. She had come home to reclaim the house my grandfather had left her in his will.
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What unfolded next revealed the steel beneath her gentleness.
My uncle had rented out her house without permission. Worse, the tenant had illegally sublet it. But Catherine — a small woman with a fierce courage — travelled the long distance alone with her baby, entered the house through the back door, and took possession before the new tenant arrived. When the police came, she stood her ground, showing proof of ownership. Friends rallied behind her. She won.
It was the beginning of her redemption.
The house had almost nothing — bare floors, no furniture — but it was theirs. Her children finally had a home.
I visited her whenever I could, defying my mother and uncle. Later, when I began working — and then earning in foreign currency — I helped in whatever small ways I could. She never asked; I never hesitated.
Life, in its odd fairness, paid her back. Her children studied well. They rose from hardship with dignity and kindness. They grew into adults who treat me like an elder brother who appeared out of nowhere — perhaps because love, once given freely, rarely disappears. It simply finds its way back in another form.
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When I look back, I see now that understanding Mary Catherine — the woman who loved fiercely, suffered silently, fought bravely, and rebuilt her life piece by fragile piece — was like walking through a maze. Every turn revealed another part of her, another reason to love her, another reason to forgive the world for not being gentle with her.
She was, in many ways, my other mother. And the boy I was — lonely, searching, hungry for affection — found in her a kindness that shaped the man I became.
And perhaps, that is why I still return to her story: to honour the woman who held my hand through childhood, lost her way for a time, and yet found her strength again — quietly, bravely, like the fair lady she always was.
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