Moments Like These

My mum and aunt went shopping for Chinese New Year yesterday and I drove them.

As I watched them pick out clothes for my dad, selecting the brightest of reds and the funkiest of designs, happily laughing at each other's selection, I know at the back of their heads, the dark cloud hung: that this may be the last one for him.

"You have to make this the best," said my friend Mary as I sat chain-smoking on her balcony and drinking copious amounts of wine. "You will find yourself during the break to Singapore, moving between moments of joy, sadness, tiredness and frustrations. But you have to take it in and make it the best! Be in the NOW."

I did not realise how hard it is when someone so close to you is ill. Especially if you are constantly thinking "could this be the last?" Yet, living in the NOW is the most important thing you need to do.

I am so mentally tired, even my hair hurts!

But I know I need to push on. The time will come when I can rest. But not yet.

Driving Ms Barbsie

I sat my dad down this evening to run through with him the things his doctor has told us to watch for. It was something I had to do, because my dad can be a stubborn man who tries to mask anything and everything over.

It is a topsy-turvy world I live in right now. Whilst he would like to live life as normal as he can, I know that he is now restraint by limits. But like I said before, stubborn man that he is, he has and will continue to try to test said limits.

As I told a cousin of mine the day I last saw Dad's doctor, perhaps I am trying too hard to protect him. Perhaps being 2 steps ahead of him is not doing either of us any good. After all, our last episode of this bubble-wrapping saw him blowing up on me over the phone.

One of our greatest unspoken issue is his ability to continue driving. And when the time comes when he is no longer deemed safe behind the wheels. I just read something from the Galway Hospice Foundation website - a piece by Prof. Joan Borst who recounted the day her father stopped driving.

"Driving was part of his identity and made him an independent man, a husband and a father; roles of worth. In comparison to the news of a brain tumour, maybe learning he would no longer drive seems insignificant, but I knew that deep down it was hugely significant for the both of us. The pain and grief I felt was a signal that my father's ability for care for me was ending."

My day would come when I have to be in the good professor's shoes. I hope and pray that when it comes, both Dad and I would be shielded from the pain and grief, and that we would do it with a large amount of acceptance so that it would be as dignified as in the days when he drove me around.

Until then, I think I shall let him drive when the opportunity arises. After all, it is not everyday that I get driven around like Ms Daisy.

Doing What Feels Right

I took the day off yesterday, got into my car at 5.30 am after an hour's sleep and drove off to the airport. I headed home to say goodbye to my uncle, my father's eldest brother.

It was a most difficult journey to make. The physical aspects of it - a whole day in a tiny hospital ICU visitor's room, endless walking to and fro to check on him. The emotional aspects of it - being surrounded by people who are holding on by a thread, their families standing around hearing the slowing bleep of the heart monitor. Yet, it was a journey that I had to make.

I had once written, that the only real legacy we leave behind when we leave this world, is our children. And I think in the last year or so, I have exemplified the legacy of my parents as well as my grandparents. For to them, nothing was and is more important than that of family and unity.

My dad is not able to travel, nor manage the emotional stress that comes with an very ill brother. My mother cannot leave his side because the doctor instructed her so. While it is painful to acknowledge that I have stepped up into my parents' shoes, I have to accept that this is the circle of life.

As I try to wear off the emotional baggage that comes with a trip and a situation that we're living in, both from my extended family and my own immediate family - I am at peace. Simply because I did and is doing what feels right.

And I know that right is right simply because it was ingrained in my bones and my whole being, just as the blood that feeds my veins is the same blood that runs through my uncle and my cousins.

All Things Past

It has been a tough morning for me today. A new year has meant nothing more than the changing of a table calendar. For the weight of yesterday still hangs heavy over my shoulder.

My dad's cancer is back. Some where in this thing he calls his body. And while things are inconclusive, he has decided that he will trust in God and not do anything anymore.

This knowledge brings with it some form of finality. For with his dicey situation, not knowing where it is at means that we cannot treat it. And to not treat it would eventually mean certain death.

Even in that certainty, we have to remain uncertain. For if we do not know where it is or how big it is, we do not know how long.

I have been thinking I steel myself against the very worst because I am a person who dares not hope. I have been concentrating my thoughts and struggle on the fact that I am the one born without the hope chest. My Pandora's box threw itself wide open way back then and even Hope got out before the lid could be shut on time.

And if I continue down this road, I would have missed the opportunity to profit from this experience, this bonus time with my dad. And it would be like my Camino all over again - to plan and trained and prepare but through all that, I missed out on the scenery, the mysteries and the joy of simply walking that pilgrimage.


There is a lesson to be learnt from all this. I know it deep down in my bones. But if I keep looking out for a sneak peek of the lesson plan, I will have missed the lesson itself.




If life, if the past is to mean anything - it is that the present is NOW, not tomorrow, not next year.