I woke up early on my day off to make it out to see my sister with my dad. I don't get to go often as I should but when my dad is driving it helps. I've learned that I am unable to drive for longer than forty five minutes without falling asleep on the wheel. Dad started talking about the things that I said when I was little and I'd sit there trying to remember when I said it.
When I was very young I told them that when I was older I'd buy them a big house so that we could all live together. Little did I know that we would all have our own families. When I was young I said that I'd have all the money to take him to all the continents to travel the world. He'd always mentioned how it would be to see Germany and Paris. See their history and their museums. I promised him that I'd take him. We were pretty much reminiscing. I started to feel an emptiness in my self with the fact that I thought at such a young age I'd be taking him places by now. He said to me but you were young and you did mean what you said but things happen. Things did happen and some I'd like to have done differently.
It's the beginning of the year and I was already planning in my mind how differently I'd do the holidays when I realized it's still going to be a long year and I don't know if I'll still have a birthday myself or one more Christmas with them here. I realized that as the days go by the less time I have with my parents. My dad will be seventy years old and my mom sixty-six this year. They both still work because that is all they know to do. My dad tried the retirement thing, but didn't enjoy it. He was missing the idea that he still had to be useful. My mom can retire but says that if she can still work why not. But time is still running out.
A woman lost her husband on Christmas day this year 2016. On Christmas day, no one is ever prepared for something like this. Four days later she was telling me of his death. I believe it hadn't really set in, that fact that her husband was gone.
I hadn't noticed because I always drive my dad around. I'd drive him around, not because he couldn't, but more of the idea that I believe all parents at one point enjoy to be driven by their children. I noticed today that my dad is getting slower at driving on the freeway. He has become one of those people that get complained on for driving slow on the freeway. That his hands aren't steady on the wheel anymore. That they shake. My time is running out. My time of promises may not ever come true. He may never see that Eiffel Tower or set foot on the grounds of the holocaust concentration camps. He is a history man and is determined to buy a Pearl Harbor movie to watch. Then it hit me, I hope I can have him again this Christmas.
Maybe I will get lucky enough to take him on that promised trip.
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