Photo: iStock
Why we rarely show how much we love our family
How much we love someone, we often only realize when it's too late. Why family should always come first, shows the sad story of a daughter about the love for her father, which she never showed him.
As the saying goes? You can not choose a family. But even when you get upset about one or the other member, we know in the deepest part that we can not choose something else any more: how much we love our family. Unfortunately, we forget this point all too often.
Like every other child, I also experienced one or the other defiant phase in the course of my development. Already at the age of four, we rejected the first time against our parents because we wanted to combine the dotted pants with the striped T-shirt. The first "I hate you" came to us very easily over the lips. Of course, the words were not meant seriously. But even though our parents were so aware of it, it hit them like a punch in the stomach. Over time, they develop a layer of emotional abdominal muscles to protect them from our eternal strikes. After all, we really do not mean it. But it hurts them anyway.
Our parents are always there. They love every fiber of our body. Nevertheless, we reject them in the course of our lives again and again, without our noticing. If my dad asked me if I could help him with bulb replacement, I did it. But not without him unmistakably feel how little desire I actually had to. He manages to do that on his own, too often through my head. What I did not realize at the time: Yes, my dad would have done it alone. But my father took every opportunity to spend time with his daughter. And because he did not want to sound like a dizzy, annoying daddy, he pretended to need my help to be with me.
The older we get, the more we get rid of our parents. This breakdown process is quite normal for us. Even when my mother shed a little tear as I brought the last furniture from my parents' home to my apartment, my father remained strong. He showed me nothing of his pain. He only called once a week, even though he wanted to hear my voice every day. He helped in the household wherever he could without ever asking for a thank you. He stroked the house from top to bottom, hoping that I would keep him company. I was too busy. I had to take care of my own life.
Every time my father visited, he tinkered around in our house again. He asked for coffee. But what he actually asked was a minute of my attention while I brought him the cup. Unfortunately, I realized all this much too late.
The last weekly phone conversation was different than usual. I was annoyed by my father's confusion. Suddenly he mistook names and dates as if he had not listened. But my father had always listened to me attentively. I ignored this fact. I hung up. The next call came from the hospital. My dad had a brain hemorrhage. And if I were as attentive as he was, I would probably have noticed. He died while I was on his way to him. I was late again - a fact that will burden me all my life.
Our parents have made us into the world, they have always been there from our first second of our lives. But this is exactly where the pitfalls of the relationship lie: Because the family has always been there, it becomes normal. That we are the life content of our parents, we are rarely aware. Often we do not really appreciate them until it's too late. In the course of our lives, we often come too late. But our family should always come first. Because how much we love her, we unfortunately show her too rarely.
(ww4)
