Through the glass door, the cold moonlight reflected on my father’s pale face, accompanied by the rhythmic ticking of the heartbeat chart machine and the pungent odor of medical alcohol in the ward. I glanced at the clock. It was 2:00 a.m.
This was my third night by his bedside since he had suffered a sudden myocardial infarction. I can’t get the image out of my head of him screaming at me for being selfish and capricious that night, but I can’t bear the thought of him fainting on the couch, struggling to breathe the next second. My gaze was drawn involuntarily from the bloodless face to the window as I sat on the modest couch beside the window. Only a few scant stars danced in the night sky, and I secretly prayed that my old guy would not be one of them.
“Why is God punishing me like this?” I mumbled.
The man lying in bed was more than my father. He was the hot milk at my bedside every night after a party, he was the “trash can” I summoned when I was unstable, he was the “giant” who let me sit on his shoulders and see the world, he was my pride and delight, and he gave me the love that all my peers envied.
When he was lying in a hospital bed, though, the giant calling the shots appeared to be quite little.
“Come and sign the form, family members of the patient.” The nurse whispered to me.
It was the day-of-surgery information sheet for my father. I scribbled down my name in one stroke while looking at the “cursed” agreement. I instantly comprehended what those three small words meant as I stared at them.
Responsibility.
I used not to study appropriately, get in trouble at school, party till the early morning hours to concern him, and take everything for granted because I assumed he would always be there, no matter what I did; I would always have a home. However, this moment signaled that the man who had always been there for me was no longer indestructible. And my once erratic, wasteful existence came to an end the moment I grasped responsibilities.
My father was released from the hospital a month later, and the procedure went smoothly.
“Can you tell me why you’re suddenly so well-behaved? My daughter is no longer recognizable to me.”
“Doesn’t this have to be your reception?”
We exchanged laughs.
Even though God was gracious and did not take him away, I knew he would not be strong indefinitely.
And I was motivated to discipline myself to become a woman at the top of the social pyramid from the moment I signed those three little words. Even if my dad becomes a star in the sky one day, I will strive to be the dazzling moon.
He shielded me through thick and thin in the first half of my life, and I will be his pride in the second.