My Father

Life is interesting. You cannot be lucky in every aspect. You are winning in some battles but loosing in others. I have been lucky in many occasions but sometimes the luck frowned on me. Many of the happy moments and many of the sad moments fade out as time passes slowly but I have unforgettable stories in my life just like every person. It is a sad one.

I was in Hawaii at that time. You can say it is one of the most beautiful places on the world. The program I was participating was not very stressful. Most of the time, we were having fun, exchanging cultures and learning lightly on leadership and other core issues. Six months passed very quickly and it was time for some friends to go home because the program has two options: to leave after six months or to leave after nine months. I felt sorry to see friends leave Hale Manoa but the hardest hit came suddenly one day when I checked my email.

It was from my sister and she said my father got liver cancer. I saw people laughing in front of the computer screen so many times because they got very good news, hilarious jokes or funny pictures from friends and relatives. To me it was a shock to see the short message. I repeated again and again hoping despearately that message change or I found my self in the bed and realize it was just a bad dream. But it was real.

To make the story short, I went back home quickly in February to take care my father. Good thing was he was not suffering a lot when I arrived back. I have seen a lot of people with liver cancer. They got diagnose and died within few weeks. But my father had a special case. It was not very aggressive and all he felt at that time was some discomfort and loss of appetite.

Then in April, I got messages from both the University of Hawaii and Johns Hopkins that they decided to provide me scholarship to do my MPH. What a bad timing. I have been trying to get a scholarship for a long time and the luck never smiled on me before. At that time, I had two offers.

My father encouraged me to go. I also really wanted to go because it was a very rare chance for me. He was also not suffering so I thought it should not be a problem to go there for a year. Selfishness got better of me and I made the decision to go. I did not tell my father that he got liver cancer because it is tradition in our country not to tell people that they have terminally ill diseases. We just told him that there was something wrong with his liver and he would be fine. It was so difficult for me to tell a lie whenever my father asked me about his health condition.

I arrived to Baltimore in July, 2003 and the first thing I felt in USA was guilt. I am a doctor but I was away when my father needed me most. I called my father every week. He was fine at first but got weaker and weaker. He always said he was fine and to study hard every time I called him. But I knew he was not fine. His voice got very weaker and weaker, he got pain that prevented him from sleeping at night. I promised him to come back and see him during Christmas holiday.

Christmas came, I went back home. I had to stop at Bangkok for the whole night because there is not flight flying in Burma from Bangkok at night. I was thinking about my father. I could not wait to see him. I hoped he would like my presents that I carefully bought from USA. I imagined he would be very happy to see me although his condition was bad at that time. I hoped I could apologize him for my selfishness. I imagined he would be smiling as he listen my experiences in USA and it would at least help him to forget his suffering for a while. I was dreaming about happy Christmas times we had when we were young because it was Christmas Eve. It was one of the longest nights in my life.

I arrived back home on Christmas day. When I stepped in my house, I saw my mother cooking in the kitchen. She did not hug me or even greet me. She was just kept on cooking. Things were strange. Then my sister told me that, my father did not wake up that morning and he got coma. I thought I was being cursed. I rushed into my father’s room. He was on the bed and was not able to answer me or look at me. My mother cired and told me that he was waiting me last night and did not go back till they went to church for midnight mass.

I called my best friends. All advised me to hospitalize him. I got chance to take care of him for the last five days in his life and he passed away on 30th December. His funeral was on the New Year day. For me, Christmas and New Year are never same as before since my father’s death. He got his consciousness at one point at the hospital but I was not sure he knew that I was beside him or not. I was also not sure that he had forgiven his selfish son or not....