the candles burned, but so did my hope.
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who wouldn’t struggle to act like everything was okay, knowing your father had been fighting for his life for the past eight months? who wouldn’t find it hard to listen when all you ever wanted to hear was that he had finally been freed from his suffering in the intensive care unit? who wouldn’t?
i tried.
i really did.
i showed up even when my mind was somewhere else. i nodded through conversations i could barely hear. i answered questions while silently waiting for another update from the hospital. my body was present, but my heart had been sitting outside that icu for days.
every day felt the same. wake up, hope for good news. prepare myself for the worst. then do it all over again.
what made it even harder?
it all happened during the week of my nineteenth birthday.
i couldn’t smile the way i wanted to because my mind kept wandering back to the hospital. while everyone else was trying to make the day feel special, all i could think about was whether my father was still holding on.
my aunt celebrated my birthday for me. she did everything she could to make me feel loved, and i’ll always be grateful for that. but deep down, i couldn’t stop crying.
my family wasn’t there.
my father was in the hospital, fighting for his life. my mother stayed by his side because she couldn’t leave him. my brother was there too. it was just me and my little sister celebrating another year of my life without the people i wanted beside me the most.
then came the moment to blow out the candles.
before i did, i closed my eyes and made only one wish.
i wished that my father would make it through. that he would leave the hospital one day, alive, breathing, and finally free from all the pain he had been carrying.
i didn’t ask for good grades. i didn’t ask for success. i didn’t ask for happiness.
i just asked for him.
and somehow, that wish came true.
he walked out of that hospital.
i still remember the day he came home. it felt like the weight i had been carrying for months had finally been lifted. for the first time in a long while, i felt like i could breathe again.
that birthday didn’t give me the celebration i had imagined. instead, it gave me something i’ll cherish for the rest of my life.
because the greatest gift i received wasn’t on the table, inside a box, or wrapped in ribbons.
it was seeing my father come home.
that year, i didn’t wish for a better life. i wished for my father to keep living.
looking back now, i realize that my wish was never too big.
it was simply made out of love.
and if i had to make that same wish a thousand times over, i would.
every single time.
