Life has certainly changed in the past year. On May 18, 2024, my father’s life changed in ways had him paralyzed and nearly dead a few times to the point that he ended up in a wheelchair and needing constant care. It is the words that no one wants to hear and for the longest time I was self-centered yet unwilling to learn that life isn’t fair and can change in a second.

There is no lie that my life has been consumed in nearly the past year by escorting my mother to many hospitals, the county home and eventually the veteran’s facility where he was for nine months before returning home a few weeks ago. It has been a trying time for many of us, and while at most times I have been pretty docile about it, the hardest part was to accept that my mother would choose to be his caregiver and that to some degree I would also have to help in that effort.

When the options were first made for him to come to his home, I was adamant that would not be a possibility. I didn’t want to hear it or think that it would be able to be done. I lashed out at my mother for wanting to do something that I could not imagine would be fair to me and change my life in a way that I was unwilling to imagine. But my life has made many changes over the years, and I have successfully got through them even though I grieved them, and I guess I grieved over the reality that the only thing that my father wanted was to come home and my mother be his caregiver, that I was being selfish and not thinking of anyone other than myself.

Eventually over the past few months, I realized that my father made many sacrifices for me over the years to make me satisfied and even stood up for what he thought I needed to have even when no one else wanted to. Deep down I know it hurt him the worst when he had to go with my mother to have me placed in a residential treatment facility when I was a teenager and even after that when there was doubt about me returning to my parents home, he saw that happen even as his world was changing, things happened to his life that he was able to retire early and help care for me even though I couldn’t see it until I took the time recently and actually did.

As things started to come to fruition with him working towards coming home, I started to see that things happen that we don’t always happen to make the choice to happen and as a result it would be better to be able to help care for him rather than be argumentative or think solely about my needs, it is something that needs to be done and no one asked for it, but assisting in making it more of a pleasant possibility made me understand that things can get better in the long run and that I need to be more of an ally to my father instead of an adversary. Indeed, life isn’t fair, but we must be able to make the best of the life we are handed.