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There was this couple living in a foreign land. They found themselves in a world far away from home in order to make a good living. They had already determined to spend a good part of their wages to educate their only son. They wanted him to become a medical doctor so they could one day sit and watch proudly as he walked up to receive that degree from a university. Both spent more time at work than with each other to make their dream come true.
“We put our lives on hold for twenty years to see him in a white coat. We concentrated on our goal with such intensity that we forgot that we also had a daughter,” the mother told me.
And their dream came true. They watched him receive the certificate and then teased him by adding the word ‘doctor’ before his name.
“I could not hold back tears of joy,” the father told me, “all the hard hours his mother and I had put in to pay for his tuition were worth our while.”
The proud parents were so happy, that, when he asked to go for a short holiday to ‘cool off’, they readily agreed to pay for it.
“We knew that he wanted to spend the last days of his carefree time before embarking on a serious career of saving lives,” the mother said. “How could we refuse?” They waved the young doctor goodbye and asked him to enjoy himself. When a week passed and there was no call from him, mum and dad were really worried. When the call came, it was from someone who simply said, “I’m sorry, but your son died after contacting a deadly flu.”
There was this brief moment of denial that quickly wore off to give way to a phase of bitterness. Why him of all the people in the world? Why our son? He was going to be a doctor and save lives in a career that we have carefully arranged for him. Why him? Why us? The world caved in for them and their lives slowly started to disintegrate.
The world had lost its meaning. Even their daughter’s presence could not touch them.
“I could not reach them, they became distant and shut themselves even from their only surviving child,” the daughter said.
They left their jobs, pulled their daughter from school and packed their bags to return home.
Friends and relatives back home could not console them and finally, they were left alone to grieve in privacy.
“I thought they were just waiting to die, which, for them, was the only thing left living for,” their daughter said. “They lost the one person in the whole world that made their life meaningful.”
Yes, they lived for him and laboured for his future and when he could not live long enough to supply the reward for them, they simply decided to cover their lives with a shroud even as they lived.
If I had to offer my own opinion then I would say that it was also a selfish burden which they put on their son, to fulfill their dream of having a son who could have been a medical doctor.
“Yes,” she agreed with me, “maybe it is not a son that they grieve for but their shattered dream.”
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