Some women at work were talking about a movie I just recently watched, The Last Song. I think I had a different perspective of the movie than the ladies I was talking with. I kept my thoughts to myself and told them I liked the movie, which I did. An email I received this morning made me think of that movie again. Here is part of the email:
“Time waits for no one.
Treasure every moment you have.
You will treasure it even more when
You can share it with someone special.
To realize the value of a friend or family member:
LOSE ONE.
The origin of this letter is unknown,
Remember....
Hold on tight to the ones you love!”
Why would this email remind me of the movie? In the movie there is an angry teenage girl which had shut out her father for many years. She wasn’t particularly thrilled with the mother either, but she totally shut out the father. She was angry about her parents getting divorced. Prior to the divorce, this father and daughter had played the piano together for years and had their own bond because of their music. I am sorry to give the ending but you need to know it to understand why this movie has its meaning for me. The father had cancer and the kids eventually found out he was sick. The daughter’s attitude changed when she found out her father was sick. The daughter was lucky that her father was a patient and loving father. They rekindled their relationship as she helped to nurse her father in his dying days. This is less than the Reader’s digest version of this movie, but enough to get the gist of it.
This movie reminded me of a few things in my own life. When I was growing up, my parents opened their home and our hearts up to foster children. Each of these children was in our home for different reasons but they all had one thing in common. They were each in a situation where their parents were either unwilling or unable to care for their children. These children were lucky; they were able to be placed in my parent’s home. At some point in these children’s lives they know that they were with someone who cared, even if it was temporary. There are commercials on the radio for foster parenting which basically says you don’t have to be “the perfect parent”, you just have to care because these kids need someone to care for them. Simply put, there are children who want a parent to care for them.
Such a simple concept and yet one that so many people take for granted.
How do foster kids and this movie tie together? There are millions of children in this world who would love to have parents that love and care for them. Then there are children who, for their own reasons, do not value their parents who love and care for them. They take the fact that they have parents who love and care for them for granted. Unfortunately, in my lifetime I have seen one too many children who are willing to cut parents out of their lives-just like the girl in the movie. I think of how much love and the relationship that child missed out on, all due to her anger. It was anger over things she had no control over-her parent’s divorce.
In the movie the daughter only had that little bit of time to see her father’s value and love, once she found out about the illness. How many people in this world miss out on the opportunity to get that little bit of time? If that father had died in a car accident, that child would have never had the opportunity to find forgiveness and love. That relationship would have ended with her anger and his death. How sad would that be? The father was relatively young, the illness wasn’t an expected one like may be expected with old age. Why does it take death for people to find the value of others, just like the email and the movie? I think of those foster kids in my home growing up and how much they would have loved to have someone who loved them. I think of the father down the street who passed away at age 48 from a heart attack with no cardiac history. He has two children that no longer have an earthly presence of their father. Then I think of my own husband who is 48 and has a cardiac history. I think of an old friend about to adopt baby number two and give another child in this world an opportunity to have a parent to love. Life is too short and too precious to take anyone in our lives for granted, no matter what the reason.
Just like the email says. “Hold on tight to the ones you love!”
