A Father's Love

I’ve always wanted to be a public speaker. When I think about what I would share and expect people to listen to when I go up on stage, the only thing that comes to mind is my parents.

Being a part of the younger generation of Tamils has led me to believe that it is a competition to show who loves their parents more over social media rather than actually appreciating our parents. Although it may not always be the case, we would rather get tattoos of our parents’ names and post on social media about them instead of spending time with our parents and telling them we love them.

It is not our fault – it’s just the way we were brought up. Talking to our parents about certain things is not looked upon as normal in our culture. Some cases may be different – I know several people who can talk to their parents about absolutely anything. But I would not say that my case is similar.

That said, I literally have no words to explain my mother. She is that amazing of a woman and I am so thankful to have someone like her. In this world, we are so blinded by attention and money that we fail to notice the little things. But my mother notices those little things. Growing up we lost a lot together, but that never stopped her from giving me everything she had.

My realization of the love and appreciation I have for my mother became more clear when I moved away for university. Due to our past together – losing my father – I was never one to really appreciate my mother. I pushed everyone and her away because that was my way of not wanting to get hurt again. You know, they say you don’t know what you have until you lose it. And I didn’t know what I had with my father until I lost him.

We live a life that is certainly not promised. Anything can happen at any time, and the last thing I want to experience is losing someone I failed to appreciate the way I did with my father. He was diagnosed with cancer when I was just a child which led to me barely knowing him.

Though there may never be another man who will love me the way my father did, I was too young to realize it at the time. This led me to not wanting to even hug him when he ultimately did pass away. To this day, there is not an hour that passes by that I don’t regret what took place in the past.

Life is too short to not tell our loved ones how much we love them – especially our parents. They spend day and night working hard to make us happy and successful. The least we can do is appreciate them and make their wishes come true. There will never be anyone in this world that will love and cherish us the way our parents do. So always remember to cherish them, because they will still be here when everyone else leaves.