Life 101

Last night I couldn’t sleep. I would wake up every two hours to attend to my father who’s been living with brain tumor for at least nine years.

The first thought that came to mind this morning was that I now understand what my friends go through with their newborn babies. I now know what it feels like to force your body out of bed and your brain to function fast enough to respond to your baby’s needs.

When it’s a baby, you have the green light to complain as much as you want and nobody, not even your conscience, would blame you.  But when it is your own father who lived his life making one sacrifice after the other for you to have the best of everything, you live with a struggle. You regret every minute you spent agonizing over his constant nagging.

It’s been a struggle ever since we were faced with the reality that it was now time to switch roles with our father.

When we were children our parents prepared us to face many of life’s possibilities. “As a wife, this is how you should treat your husband. As a mother you should do this with your kids and avoid doing that to them, etc etc.”  But they missed a very important lesson, which is “if you were ever faced with the painful reality of having to switch roles with us, this is how we would like you to do it.”

This important lesson was never part of my “Life 101.”

Life 101 that my parents taught me was all about the best of life possibilities. It didn’t have any “Ifs”. It was all about “WHEN you fall in love, WHEN you get married and WHEN you have kids, we will be there for you”.  All false promises, none of which actually materialized!

I had to learn “Life” all over again, and this time without a tutor.

As much as you feel you’ve perfected the new role bestowed upon you for reasons only known to God, the child in you won’t accept it.

I miss being parented. I miss the times when I used to look forward to going back home to pour out the events of my day to my parents who’d be waiting eagerly with open ears.  I miss being the one nagging and the one asking for help.

Life is tough to say the least. But our parents are not to blame for not exactly explaining it that way. They may have really believed that we were immune to all kinds of pain and suffering. Instead they spent the time they had with us building castles in the air.

I really don’t know what is right and what is wrong. 

I look at my father every day and wish I could pour my heart out. I look him in the eye sometimes and hope to catch a moment of clarity. Occasionally I’d get a teardrop confused with a smile loaded with a thousand words of love and longing. And I carry those seconds in my heart until I’m again reminded of the new role.

C'est la vie as they say.  But I still love life and everything it has to offer despite all the unpleasant surprises along the way. I guess the trick is to always try to find happiness in the toughest of situations.

This is the lesson I would’ve added to my Life 101:

Always be prepared for pain but be quick to accept by finding peace in your heart to move on.