What if?

It was about evening, still somewhat bright and mildly windy.
A reunion gathering was happening at my high school so I decided to attend.
I left the house and started walking to my school. I headed passed the tennis courts and crossed the oval and headed towards gym, where the reunion was being held.
I walked into the gym, and there was greeted by all my high school friends and teachers. Nothing really interesting happened that night: same friends, same teachers and same school, just that everything was older. What did stick out to me throughout the night was a young teenager that I didn't know. It didn't seem like he was with anyone, so I went up beside him and we started talking. For the rest of the night I just talked to him, got to know him, his name, who he came with amongst other things.
As the night came to a close and I was getting ready to leave, I said goodbye to him and began to leave. However, I didn't get very far before I turned around at the sound of him arguing with his parents. I watched the remainder of the argument between him and his parents before chasing after him as he stormed off away from his parents.

I convinced him to stop running and tell me what was going on, he simply replied 'I just want to get away from them' and kept running. I followed him, glancing behind to see his parents not too far away. After coming up some steps, his parents seemed to have slowed down. The father couldn't run any further, and midway up the steps, in the short moments before collapsing backwards, reached out for his son. He fell into the arms of the mother, who unable to support his full weight, fall back also.

The chase ended. The boy stopped running at the sight of his parents collapsing. I looked at the parents as they cried in each others arms at the steps. I looked at the boy as he looked at them. His eyes full of abandonment, his eyes looking to abandon them. He turned around and began walking away from his weeping parents.

At that point I grabbed his t-shirt and pulled him back to where his parents were. They were crying, yet he was barely looking at them.

They said that he's left them before, drugs and alcohol pulled him away. They said that he's leaving them now because he doesn't want to be with them, and that he's running away from them.
Then the father said he doesn't have much time left. In his fragile, teary state he uttered three words that pierced my heart.

'I have cancer'.

At that point my heart grew heavy, like a wrench hitting my chest as I began suffocate trying to swallow the three words. My vision became blurry from the unstoppable tears that began to water my eyes.
My heart felt so contrite.
I began to cry.
I cried, not for parents, not for the dying father, not sympathetically for the boy, but for what if.

What if, they weren't his parents but they were mine and I was the boy?

What if, my dad had cancer and was dieing in my mums arms?

What if, they were dieing and all the while I was running, trying to get away from them, trying to leave?

My alarm went off, it was 7:30am.
My eyes opened to the sight of my bedroom door, my vision was still blurry from the tears I cried and my heart was still heavy from feelings of conviction.
It was a dream. It was a nightmare. It was a painful feeling to wake up to.
Yet the gravity of the reality behind the dream hits me. My parents are completely healthy and I cried so much at only the thought of them dieing. I can't imagine a reality of waking up to this feeling everyday, waking up to the knowledge of my parents actually having cancer. I can't imagine losing my parents...

Beneath my heavy breath I uttered a small prayer to God - Sorry Lord, forgive me, make me a better son.

Perhaps we should appreciate our parents more.
You don't truly know what you have until its gone.

When was the last time you told your parents that you love them?