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adios

A cloud of sadness blows over my mind as I reminisce over what has been and what may come.

 

2024 checks out tomorrow and I’m torn in between whether to celebrate the finale of what has been the worst year of my life or to mourn over the possibility that my streak of bad luck may possibly cross over to the New Year.

You must have heard of those people who take much longer to fully awake after they awake, or else they fall and hit the edge of the bed and its breaking news before the morning news.

 

Well, I happen to be those, or a more complicated one.

 

I rise up too fast, I fall down and injure myself.  You talk to me too early, I blurt out all my secrets and forget that I did.  I open my eyes too fast, I go mental for what feels like an eternity before making a connection of where, what, when or who I am/at.

 

So when my mom woke me up in the dead of the night asking that I take her pressure and heartrate, I have no idea how long it took for my body to know it was time to turn on its autopilot.

 

It didn’t register to me until way much later in the afternoon, after another yet hospital readmission, that she was staying with me…and everything that had unfolded.

 

On the fateful night, her blood pressure and heart rate were on the verge of hitting the 200s.  So scary for a woman in her late 60’s who had just had heart surgery.

 

Driving to hospital in that eerie pitch black hour when only thieves and drunkards thrive, I recalled my brother and me as kids, when he shared his Big Discovery.  That, if people carried steaming hot water in thermoses and periodically poured just a little on the sick person being ferried to the hospital, they would make it there alive.  Or, if you pinched them regularly.

 

I have taken many drives, and this to date remains the scariest.  Just thinking how I’d pull over the Emergency Entrance and call in for help and on opening the door realize she was no more…  I sure would never heal from that.

 

No matter how much I needed her to preserve her energy, I had to keep scalding her with hot water aka keep her talking, just to know that she was holding on.

 

This turned to be one of several other visitations we had to make before she got well and the nightmare turned into a testimony.

 

But this isn’t just it.

 

2024 has been a Pandora’s Box packed up with one package of bad luck after another.

 

My business hit a dead end.  People always say that the good thing about hitting rock bottom is that there’s no other way to go than Up.  Guess they don’t know about caving in way under.

Bills keep piling up.  Nothing kills your spirit more than working so hard yet, struggling for basic needs.

My crop failed miserably.  I wanna say farming is a scam, which it sure is, but, man got to eat.

Loans keep piling up. From friends, family, banks, mobile apps, and from there comes the auctioneers.

 

At a certain point, I wondered, is God turning me into a modern-day Job? Because, when everything else fails, somehow, you hold on to faith with hope that there’s light at the end of the tunnel, but, nada, it’s been one tunnel after another, and the worst bit about it is feeling that God too has abandoned you and you’ve been abandoned in this jungle where survival is for the fittest.

 

That’s why it’s all nonchalant down here.

 

And since I know there are more of us in this turmoil, I feel the best way to say Goodbye to 2024 and Welcome the New Year is by appreciating the Small Little Things.

 

Mom’s health is as good as it was possibly 20 years ago, no kids missed school due to unpaid fees, we never slept hungry, there’s roof over our shoulder, no one’s sick…

 

Still, is it Bad to Yearn for More?  To Desire more than mere Survival?  To go a Step further on Maslow’s Hierarchy Pyramid?  To Live a Happily Fulfilling Life?

 

Here’s to a Better Year – lets compare notes in December.

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