I Believe The Sun Will Come Up Tomorrow

When I was younger, and something wasn’t going my way, my dad would tuck me in at night and reassure me that no matter how badly I felt in that moment, the sun would come up tomorrow. At the time, it almost made me feel resentful towards him. How could he be so unsympathetic to my problems, and dole out the same, impersonal retort to each and every one? Who was he to dismiss them so flippantly and bury them at dusk? Of course the sun would come up tomorrow, but what of it?
As I got older, my bad days consisted of more than just tiffs with friends at school or sibling rivalry, but learning to overcome death, loss, and heartbreak. Still, my dad reminded me time after time, the sun would come up tomorrow. I consider my father one of the most brilliant men I know, and I’m fairly certain he could converse with a tree if it didn’t uproot itself, so why did his credo seem so thoughtless and dismissive?
Last year, I almost lost my sister. She was in the hospital for five days. Five days waiting to live. Five days waiting to die. All any of us could do was wait. The thing about hospitals is time stands completely still, and before you know it, Monday morning becomes Wednesday night, and you lose all touch with reality without an opportunity to put up a fight. But that’s the great part about finding yourself on the brink on insanity, there is tremendous clarity when you gain perception from dangling off the edge. Laying on the floor of the waiting room, I realized the one constant I could count on through all of this was the sun. It didn’t depend on what day it was, or what condition my sister was in, it was going to come up regardless. The sun wasn’t meant to symbolize a beacon of hope that it would all be alright, but rather a reminder that time stand stills for no one, and just as the days march on, so must we.
At age twenty-two, I’ve witnessed my fair share of sunrises and sunsets, and experienced the storms in between. I can finally appreciate my dad’s unwavering response, and I know we are all a testament of it’s truth. I believe the sun will come up tomorrow.