WHEN IT COMES TO FAMILY SENTIMENT, WORDS ALONE ARE NEVER ENOUGH!

With the past few days writing continuously about parents and children, many footages of memories from the past have appeared in my mind, making me overwhelmed with emotions.

I am not sure about how old you, the person who is reading these lines, exactly are, but I am sure that you must also be a child of a family, or maybe a person with a sweet home, who takes care of their family members living inside that home every day. Moreover, perhaps, in your heart, somewhere, at some point will also be those childhood memories, reflecting your family or loved ones. There may be a father, mother, or siblings, and sometimes it is not your parents, but the ones who raised and taught you kindly. There are those first memories of your life, memories that helped you to become who you are today.

We might remember or forget a lot of our childhood experiences, but there will be 2 specific milestones that I think you would never forget: Firstly, the moment when you receive your first paycheck from your labor. Secondly, the moment when you give birth to your first child! That is because it is only when those two moments occur, that you truly appreciate, tolerate, and feel guilty towards your parents, people who are the closest to you!!

I have a friend, I called him my “friend” but he is still quite young. He is working as an Assistant General Manager at a well-known Vietnamese company. The nature of an assistant is to always be busy. Especially when working in a large corporation, the busyness is doubled. Due to the not-so-wealthy condition of his family, ever since he arrived in the city to attend university, my friend has had to take advantage of as much time as he can to work many different jobs outside of school hours so that his parents do not have to worry about fees and money.

The tight schedule of doing school and working also means that he does not have much time to go home, spend time and have family meals with his parents anymore. The number of times returning home decreased significantly to the point it was only quick calls before those long working shifts that were all that left. By the time he graduated from school, the young man was fortunate to work as an assistant with quite a high salary, compared to his peers in the same year. After a year of working, he has had opportunities to travel to provinces around Vietnam, and even go on international business trips to places he never thought he could ever be able to visit. However, to be able to fulfill that dream and earn as much money as he wanted, the trade-off is the limited time he could spend with his parents, who were living in the countryside. Although, the young man has spent the money of the first month’s salary to buy his parents a smartphone. From there set up a Facebook account so that every time he calls, his parents can see him.

Just like that, three years after graduation, he worked so hard, he became better and better while following his dreams, got many raises, and finally became an effective right-hand man of the corporation’s big boss. Nonetheless, life is not easy. To achieve that many goals, in those 3 long years, he only came home 5 times… That was 3 times during Tet (Lunar New Year) and 2 times of annual long leaves at the company. Those days adding up are not even worth a fraction of the thousand days that have passed by.

You may not believe this but do you know that an adult’s time fund is too little and truly expensive? Especially for young people, new doors and horizons will always keep them running, engrossed in their youth with their vitality still burning in their chests. You are even more motivated when having strong and wide wings, making you always just want to fly and reach out further… Therefore, sometimes you forget that the door to your family is always there all alone with two old people, just going in and out like a habit, looking forward to seeing you one day.

Then, you know what?
A pandemic struck. COVID-19 is not only found in the City, where it is crowded with people. The epidemic crept into every village, and every field, leaving the parents of the young man, unfortunately, infected with the virus. Being in those last years of life while having weak resistance and underlying diseases, his father could not bear it any longer and finally passed away. At that time, he was still stuck in the city’s lockdown, fearing the steadily increasing number of deaths day by day…

At that moment, you know, no matter how many trips, how many joy-coming promotions there are, they could never make up for the last time seeing his father. In this world, there would be many times we fall into deadlocks, but one of the most terrible feelings is helplessly watching a loved one leave you forever while unable to do anything. Even if you have so much money, you still can not do anything…

Perhaps, the last hope of my friend at that time was his mother. She had overcome and recovered her health, but in that heart, half of her soul was already lost when her soulmate, who she was close to for her whole life, had returned to the cold land…

“How many “ten years” do we have left in life?…
When writing this paragraph, suddenly these lyrics popped up in my head, making me even more emotional.
That is right, how many times “ten years” do we have left to be with our parents, relatives, and friends?

Being under twenty years old, we only knew about studies and friends, even always wanting to escape the custody of our family. By the age of 20, we are like birds rushing into life with all the love, enthusiasm, passion, and time. At that time, very few people remembered about their family, their parents. We even rarely realize that, when we are in our twenties, our parents have already reached their old age. Our parents’ age, when compared to ours, exists an age gap of at least about ten or twenty years. By the time we were in our thirties, we started to have quite a stable job, then we might have started taking care of our small family.

So, how many “ten years” are there left in life?
How many “ten years” to always be able to see our loving parents still being there, looking at us with a smile, squinting their wrinkled eyes, having hands full of age spots, waiting for us to return home to enjoy a simple yet loving meal together under that old, memorable house?

I know that this life will rarely give us completeness, where we will have to regret many things we have done or have not done in the past. There certainly are a lot of problems related to our families. Just like the young man in the story above, he has forever lost the opportunity to see, hug, or take care of his beloved father, in that painful, lonely moment where he was slowly leaving his life…

When it comes to family sentiment, words alone are never enough! That is a fact.
Those of you who still have parents, are still eating meals at home, and can still see them every morning and night, please respect and treasure them. Moreover, for those who only have a father or mother left, please also give them all the love, and affection to make up, soothe and fill those emotional lonely gaps for those old, hardship people…

I just hope that you and I will always be able to do many meaningful things with our family members, will always have enough time to enjoy a proper meal with our father and mother, and will be able to correct any mistakes before it is too late!

Much love,
Truly Inspired