Ozbots

Have you ever experienced just relaxing at home, enjoying the wonderful day, when you were suddenly asked to do something rigorous? Like clean your room, do the dishes, or take the car to the shop? Be asked to help your old fashioned mom with something related with today’s growing technology, which usually means fixing the “Mini Laser Disc” (Which what she meant to say, of course, was the DVD player)? Wouldn’t your initial reaction be “hell no. Nothing is going to get me out of bed / sofa”? Well in our house my siblings and I cannot say such a thing because of what our mother would always say: “Do not do tomorrow what you can do today.”

I have always hated it when my mother would say that line of hers. For me, it is not really appropriate because there is always that other saying of, “There’s always tomorrow.” I must admit, I can get really lazy sometimes. That is why I liked that saying a whole lot better than my mom’s. (However, I learned the hard way… JUST KIDDING, MA’AM) However, it was only when something extreme happened did I truly understand how appropriate that line of my mom really is. It was only until my father passed away.

When I was in the fourth grade, I kept delaying most of the things I did, especially my school work. But sadly, among those things I delayed was spending time with my father.

It was this time that my father suffered a stroke. He suddenly collapsed while working out and hit his chest on the edge of a chair which disabled his breathing. My uncle, along with the trainers, rushed him to the hospital. Fortunately, the hospital was close by because my father was already turning blue due to the lack of air. My uncle called my mom once they got to the hospital and explained what happened. He said that the doctors mentioned that he was officially dead for six minutes but luckily, they were able to revive him. We came as quickly as possible as soon as my mom put down the phone but unfortunately, even with the doctor’s best efforts, our father had slipped into a comma.

After two days, my father woke up from the comma. We thought all was well at that point but due to the gravity of the incident, we learned that he was paralyzed. The doctors said that this was curable but it would take a long time for a full recovery. Because of the long time table given by the doctors, our mother turned our guest room into a “hospital room,” buying all sorts of equipment and even hiring a nurse so that we could have our father rest in our house instead. Even though it was very very expensive, our mom chose to do this so that it would not be hard for us to spend time with our father. All we needed to do was go down a flight of stairs and we would see him already. However, even with the easy accessibility, I did not spend a lot of time in that room because at the back of my mind I always thought that, “I could spend time with him tomorrow, I have ‘stuff’ to do today.” The next day would come and I would think the exact same thing again, then the next day, then the day after that, and so on. Now don’t get me wrong, this does not mean that I did not see my father at all. What I mean by all of this is just that I could have spent more time with him… but I didn’t because I always thought that “there is always tomorrow.” I kept thinking this until two years passed by, until that tomorrow I always said there would be never arrived.

You see, two years my father spent in the comfort of our homes. Two years did God give us to spend more time with him. However, after seeming to be on his way to a full recovery, another stroke occurred that took him away from us. It was such a difficult time for our whole family. We could not believe what happened. We all thought that everything was going to be alright because our father was already starting to move his hands and feet when that happened. We all broke down in tears, especially me.

I was the most affected by this, after my mom of course, because I was the one who stayed in my father’s room the night before he died. My mom woke me up in the middle of the night to tell me that I had to go back upstairs because they were taking my dad to the hospital. She told me to say goodbye to him. But because I was still sleepy and because I thought, there was always tomorrow, I did not do it. So you could imagine why I felt so bad after this. I was given two years to spend more time with my father but I did not take advantage of it. I was given a chance to say my goodbye, but I did not take it. And to this day, it still hurts to think of how my laziness got me to waste these golden opportunities. How I should have did something while I had the chance, and not waited until that chance went away. On how I should have not done it tomorrow since I could have done it today.