Life's like an hour glass glued to the table..
So I find myself in a similar situation yet again...
I'm sitting alone in a small corner of the hospital waiting room. There's noises coming from all directions.. three TVs all on different channels are at full volume.. there's phones ringing.. and I can hear bits and pieces of conversations from everyone around me.
The woman next to me is reading what looks like a love novel, breezing through the book faster that I can probably read one paragraph. Her husband is in the operating room getting what I thought I heard the nurse say was heart surgery. Yet her face is completely straight as she buries her face inside her book.
The older gentleman across from me is sitting with a younger girl, picking at his hands in what looks to be anxiety, while his brother goes in for what I overheard was a double knee replacement.
And to my right diagonally, sits two young parents, holding each other's hands while their 4 year old girl is getting her tonsils removed and ears worked on. Their faces completely showing their fear and anxiousness.
Then there's me. My dad is undergoing surgery on his right shoulder, which should have been done years ago, where the doctor is going to try to repair whatever is left up there. I'm not nervous, I know he will be okay, but I find myself chewing on my nails as I look around this waiting room that is filled with so many different people from so many different backgrounds.
I think we take so much of what we have in life for granted. The one thing you can never get back is time. You can turn your life completely around from bad and make your dreams come true, but you will never be able to get back the minute that just passed.
Life is not easy, I've learned that the hard way, but we have to learn to appreciate those moments of joy as deeply as we can while they are here. Because time is not something you can ever get back once it is gone.
The room is slowly clearing out, each person going to those who are finished in the operating room. Still no news on my father but I am confident that he will be okay, because he still has a lot of life to go, a lot of time to live.
