Friday, July 27, 2012

Past, present & future

Today is the beginning of the future.

How the world changes, at a drop of the hat, a flip of the coin. Instead of waiting for Dad to come out of surgery today, we explored palliative therapies that the oncologist may prescribe come Monday. Instead of focussing on the curative, we are now looking for palliatives.

The whole of today as I drove from one errand to the next, I could not help but recall when I was Daddy's little girl - following him around JB town, getting lunch, picking up his cigarettes from the wholesalers, stopping by church...

What I would give to go back there again... When our world was safe, sound and made sense. When the present was forever and the future so distant it didn't even cross our minds.

I dread asking on Monday, how much time. And in many ways, I really do not want to know. For what is the point of knowing, if only to have dread set in.

If we are set and determined to make the best of life, then truly would knowing how long the future is going to last, going it make any difference?

All I have is the present and that is all that matters.


Thursday, July 12, 2012

Winded

My dad was diagnosed with 1st stage renal cancer yesterday. In about 2 weeks' time, he would go from having a pair of kidneys to just having one.

"It suddenly dawned on me, that the time when there is no more fixing to be done, is drawing up really fast," I told Mandy. There is something to be said about saying something out loud - it brings it into shape, it brings it into the present. It makes it real.

At the countless funerals I have been to in the past 3 years, mortality has never struck me as an issue. I have my loose ends tied up and my 'i's dotted, 't's crossed. If my time comes prematurely, I know my children and family would be well taken care of. But I realise that I have been looking at it from a purely financial and material perspective. Sure - both kids would be millionaires then but they would be losing their one and only parent.

When Grandma passed on, my colleague told me that "losing a grandparent is unsettling." She neglected to say that losing a parent would be life-changing. Even the mere thought of it is already sending ripples and waves the size of tsunamis across this small ocean called my brain.


I have come to realise that no matter what age we are, we will never be ready to lose a parent.  It changes you in ways that you never thought possible. As it is now, having spoken to various persons most knowledgeable in this field, I am already filled with remorse. Yes, everyone tells me that I cannot put the blame of this illness at my own door.Yet, if you knew me as in really knew me - you would know that my own door is my first port of calling in the analysis of "How did this happen?!"


And so I will fight - with every ounce of my physical being, with every dime that I have tied to my name. Because I did not fight harder when I should have. As another colleague says: We're in curative stage - so no expenses will be spared, even if I have to up-root everyone to the one place where my faith in medicine and medical miracles is strongest.

My only hope is that, when the time comes - hopefully decades from now - I will not let it go with any regrets of not having done more.