Shifting focus from career to family

Fallon

“I have learned to appreciate simple moments. I am so blessed to have both of my parents still on this earth despite serious illness,” she said. “While working on Saipan for the last few months, I miss the morning cups of coffee with my Dad.”

Fallon recounted how just before coming to Saipan, she set aside some time for her mother to talk about her jewelry and help put it away in a safety deposit box.

“With my tablet I took pictures of her jewelry for her. As I was doing this, I noticed that she had made handwritten notes that she carefully placed inside many of the jewelry boxes to go to her grandchildren, her niece, her godchild, and a dear friend. I paused—I realized that she had come to terms that she was not long on this earth and that she wants to make sure that she does not forget anyone.”

It was at that moment that Fallon really paid attention, helping her mom review each piece of jewelry, learning of each one’s history so that she too may know the stories and reminisce.

“I gave her my undivided attention. I focused on her as she struggled to make decisions. I was patient and not urgent. I simply sat with her. At times she would lose focus, she would go off in tangents of various stories, the jewelry would wait, then she would come back to the task. In the end, she had tears in her eyes as she said ‘thank you for taking your time, I know you are busy with getting ready for your business trip back to Saipan.’”

Fallon said she has now become adept in handling her anxiety of managing a solo tax practice and complex federal tax litigation, while taking care of her aging parents’ needs.

“I am used to being uncomfortable with being uncomfortable. I simply exhale the urgent deadline-driven projects. I wipe away that stress when I sit down with them. Time slows down in their presence like watching water drop falling off a leaf after a storm.”

Fallon cherishes each moment with her parents, describing it as “precious, limited, and exquisite”.

“These conversations are finite as their time is on this earth. I have the privilege of taking care of them in their final years,” she added.

That made it that much bigger of a struggle when Fallon had to leave her parents and return to Saipan for a work project.

“I also needed to get my older brother to spend time with my parents. He is so busy with his own family and work issues. He was not listening to me,” she noted.

Fallon explained that her sibling did not understand their parents’ declining health condition.

“He was still blindly relating to them as they were when they were younger and healthier. He still expected them to help him. He did not see that dad needed his help to get up out of the chair but dad is too proud ask for his help,” she said. “ My warnings and arguments fell on deaf ears. So I told him I am going to Saipan and you are going to have to move in and take care of mom and dad. Our cousin Steven would help out on the weekends when you had your kids.”

The first few days were tough for her brother. Fallon said that as she was traveling she heard numerous complaints.

“I heard his mystified voice on the phone saying ‘they won’t eat what I brought home. They do not know how to run the microwave. They do not know how to use the k-cup coffee maker. They want the same old coffee maker that they had from before. It’s broken. The new coffee maker is better easier and cleaner’—on and on it went.”

About four months into her stay on Saipan, she said her brother’s conversations noticeably started to change.

“He announced one day on the phone to me ‘I am staying with them over the weekends now. I helped Dad put in his eye drops after is cataract surgery. He is so small now. He is so weak. They are so fragile.’”

Fallon said that all of sudden the guilt lifted and the burden was off of her shoulders.

“I realized that God in His strange way arranged all these events perfectly. If I did not go to Saipan, my brother would have never taken the time to slow down and care for them. He would not have had the lovely opportunity that I have had for six years of all those great conversations.”

Just the other day, Fallon said, her brother told her, “You know, I make coffee in the morning for Dad and we sit and talk.”