The Week That Was – Jan 25 – Feb 1, 2010

The first month of the year closed off on a quite note work wise. Not much, other than the usual day to day work, has been happening in the month. Most of the time was spent planning for the rest of the year which hopefully will help once the next few months roll around.

The biggest item that happened in the past week was me being reminded of my parents’ mortality. As children, we always think that our parents will be there for us forever but as we grow older those youthful ideas get jarred by sometimes harsh realities that they don’t.

My father had recently been having some health problems and had to go for a checkup at the hospital. He was the type that would previously refuse to do so despite being asked to so many times by the family so for him to finally relent to go for the check up signaled to us that he was really hurting this time. True enough, he came back with a whole list of aliments that he has been ignoring all these years and now have caught up on him.

We all immediately knew that this is a major health scare for him when the first thing that he did after coming back from the checkup was to throw away all his cigarettes. Being a smoker for as long as I can remember, we knew that he must have finally come to the realization of what all that smoking was doing to his lungs. I have not personally seen his chest x-rays but according to my mum who did see it, his lung was already in bad shape. To top it all off, my father finally accepted that he does have diabetic condition that he has been in denial for years even with the doctor’s diagnosis.

My father has always been a confident person but after the medical checkup it seems that his confidence has been deeply shaken by the news. The family had long known that he has been in denial about his health issues and now it was already too severe to be ignored even by him. He now has his off and on days, health wise, but it is taking a toll on his confidence and the family.

He is currently still strong, walking around on his own and able to manage himself but I can’t help that eventually his strength will fail him. I have experience death in the family before but as they say, death of a parent is something totally different. I may even have many years ahead before it happens. As my father would often remind us that the males in our family generally lived well into our 80’s and he still has at least 20 years to go. But what kind of life would that be if you spend the next 20 years in a vegetative state? I duly hope that scenario is something that would never come to pass.

Mortality is quite disturbing when confronted.