Isn’t it strange how people hardly ever practice what they preach…
Live and let live only counts when not applied to the idiot who just cut in front of you in the traffic jam from hell.
A friend in need is a friend in deed… until that friend comes knocking on your door and you have other things to do.
Charity begins at home is surely true but it shouldn’t end there should it?
Forgive and forget is the one that gets me most and also one of my mother’s favorites… she is forever telling me when I’m angred about this or that, that I should follow in her foot steps and… forgive and forget!
Thing is that she is perhaps easy to forgive but the forgetting part well thats just like an elephant grave yard and just like all elephants she knows exactly where to go to mope over the old bones.
My father passed away in July of last year… for me this was a traumatic time as I had shortly before his death decided that he will spend his last years with me and Tris, according to his doctors he should have had about 2 to 3 years left before he would need to go into a home for frail care.
Now at this time my mother and I where sharing a flat and my father was just coming out of hospital… I breached the subject with her and she promtly packed all her belongings and moved to my aunt, claiming that the history was just to much for her to even temporarily share a home with my father.
So that left me with my son and my extreamly ill father. In the two weeks he was with me my father and I spent most nights reliving his life, the mistakes he had made… not only with my mother and deceased brother but also with me and my remaining brother. I saw my father crying over all the hurt he had caused others and I was finaly able to forgive him the pain he had caused me at times.
Every night when I came home from work he looked weaker and weaker until he woke me one night short of breath… I called the ambulance and had him taken to hospital, he had no medical aid so he had to go to HF Verwoed… not the best place to be but they took care of him as best they could.
He was there for nearly two weeks… and in that time I was only able to go visit him every second day as my mother still refused to come home and I had to ask others to babysit Tris (who was not allowed in the ward at all but thankfully one of the nurses allowed him entrance one Saturday)
So I went as often as possible and did as much as I could to cheer him up. On Tuesday the 6th of July Tris asked if he could say goodnight to his Oupa… after speaking to Tris for a while my father told me the good news he was going to receive an oxygen tank from the hospital and would be discharged the next day! I was so happy and he sounded so relived to be coming home… that night the hospital called at 2:30 am on the 7th of July 2010… my father had passed away peacefully in his sleep…
For all her preaching about forgive and forget I honestly hold a grudge against my mother for leaving me to deal with it all alone, oh she came when I called and after assisting me with the arrangements for my fathers remains she promptly returned to my aunt… no one els was there for him or for me. During his stay in hospital he and I had both reached out to so many people to come to him… none did… to be fair my brother came to see him one Saturday, brought him some fruit chatted 30 minutes and left.
Every one cried… every one said how sorry they are about his death… but no one was willing to forget their grudges, to forgive and forget, to let bygones be bygones… in the end it was up to me to hold his hand as he cried for the son he nearly didn’t get to say goodbye to as he died from cancer because of his own pigheadedness… about the son he cant save from his drug addiction… about the things he said to people he loved to push them away before they could get a chance to push him away… about the hate my mother held for him and the pain it was causing me to be torn between them yet again…
Now I feel selfish… no one is to touch anything that was his… and now every one wants their piece…but then I guess thats just people being people… right?
Walking with an Angel 