24th Jan: A day of buttery coffee

It’s the 24^th of Jan, and once again I came back like any other day that I have been doing so for the past 3 plus years or so. Never fail to bring back  fond memories whenever I step into geylang bahru.

On this day, I, together with 2 other fellow volunteers from MINDSville (sorry that I cant remember the names :X), visited Uncle T for his usual cup of buttery coffee at the coffeeshop nearby. I guess he was initially waiting anxiously for volunteers like us to bring him down for his once-a-week kopi session? When we went up to his flat, he was already wearing his nice attire, ready to go down at any moment. So as I call out to him, he just went about asking who we are and whether we are some of the familiar volunteers (I shall touch on it later). Nonetheless, I just assure him that we are the usual students that will accompany him every Saturday morning, and after much persuasion, we bring him down for his tasty buttery coffee. In case anyone doesn’t know, Uncle T likes to drink coffee with the addition of 3 slices of butter. According to him (and perhaps from researcher too), having buttery coffee is actually beneficial for your health. For uncle T’s case, it was said that it helps to clense the body by lubricating your digestive system and all, and all the ‘Bad stuff’ will be cleansed away after a visit to the toilet.

And so it started like any other visit, we interact with the elderly to make his day a better one. I bought newspapers and herbal tea for him while giving the chance for the 2 new volunteers to interact with him and listen to his stories. However, I think Uncle T isn’t very happy that day as he feels a little moody. I guess he misses some of the volunteers that used to visit him but came less often due to sch or work. As we converse throughout the session, he occasionally asked us about Lin mei mei/yang mei mei/ah hai or whether they are here today. As much as we don’t wish to disappoint him, the only words we can say to him is that they are busy and couldn’t make it for visit. And of course he may temporarily forget about these before bringing them up minutes later. And overall, we only manage to accompany him for about one and a half hours before he decided to go back home. 

After bringing him back, my group just went over to Mdm H’s house for a short stay before we went down for debrief. However, whats going on in my mind during the briefing was just about the look in Uncle T’s face after the kopi session. I guess he really misses quite a number of people that tends to be more close to him, and I felt a little sad that I may not be able to make his day a little better despite trying my best to crack lame jokes and asking funny things about him that he is capable of sharing.

 I guess the takeaway from this session for me is that all of us may think that we are just volunteers and we are merely there to accompany them and help them in whatever way we can. However,  I hope we can bear in mind that we too can gradually become good friends, good grandsons/granddaughters to them in the long run. There are many times where we may think it is just another day to visit them, just another usual Saturday morning where we share a short 1 or 2 hours with the elderly. Yet these little moments are what they look forward to and they cherish every moment the time that they spent with us. Gradually, we may have other commitments and we may not be able to visit them often, but you should know that we are always in their hearts, always in their mind. We aint just volunteers to them, but to them we are something more. Call it friends, call it grandchildren if you want, the thing is this is a bond that is gradually formed as we interact and share our small moments together.  So I hope that we don’t just visit them for this phase of our academic life, and went on being busy with our own stuff in the next. They misses us,  they probably will all the time. I hope we, as much as I, wont forget to go back and look for them as we move towards the next year or the next phase. To some of us it may be a CCA. To them, it is a lifetime of friendship. So cherish every moment with them, and make their every Saturday a good one (which I still have a long way to learn:p) and paint a smile on their face :)

Chaur Ann