I Believe in Second Chances Podcast

I Believe in Second Chances

I slept through the sirens and whistles.  I woke up alone.  The broken coffee mug, which was shattered across the floor, confused me and no one would answer my calls.  Hours later, I was dropped off at the hospital, looking for reassurance but finding none.  My dad had suffered a massive stroke.  The doctors gave him a five percent chance of survival, primarily in a vegetative state.  They expected him to die.  I could not remember the last thing I had said to my dad.  I remember looking around in the small conference room, staring at my mother who had no tears left to cry, watching my aunt slide down the wall to the linoleum floor with her palms to her eyes, covering her sobbing face.  My family was facing a tragedy.  My world, however, was not crushed.  The previous thirteen years of my life, my mom had been everything to me and dad had been a three-letter word.  While he had lived with us in the physical sense, emotionally, his head was always in the bar during my childhood and, quite frankly, I hardly knew him.

The next six months, while he was comatose, I spent more time by his side than I could ever recall previously.  When he woke up half a year later, my dad was different.  His large, muscular body had transformed into an 87-pound sack of skin and bones.  His clamorous voice was lost under the tracheostomy tube, which sprouted from his neck.  He was scared, confused, and helpless, but my dad was also determined.  He started his life over from scratch.  Slowly, he gained his own voice back and began to resemble a middle-aged man again, but that wasn’t close to the hardest parts of the recovery process.  It took months before my dad could even crawl a few feet, but he did it.  Four years and countless surgeries later, my dad, a new man, is struggling day to day to do the simple task of walking.  With his voice back, my dad never fails to tell me he loves me, every chance he has.  He became the father every child yearns to have, and I could not help but love and care for him because of that, even if it was thirteen years late.  It was an inspiration for me to see this man, who had been given a five percent chance of living, striving for and achieving more than could have ever been expected from him, physically and emotionally.  This is how I choose to live my life: beyond the expectations, just like my dad.

I witnessed a miracle. A man, who was heading down the wrong path, was stopped and given a second chance to a life as a better person.  From this experience, I learned that failures can become successes; when people expect you to fail, prove them wrong, get up and walk.  Because of my dad, I believe in second chances.