Visit to Mr and Mrs L and Mdm C!
Posted by CSC T.H.E. Seniors on Sunday, October 04, 2015 with No comments
Hi everyone, it's been a long time since I last posted here! This week, along with Vina and Kevin, we visited Mr and Mrs L. We don't usually get to see Mrs L at home because she needs to work on saturdays occasionally, but this week she was at home. My first question for Mrs L was whether she wanted us to help her with her housework. I know that Mrs L is the main caregiver in the household due to Mr L's conditions, and she usually does the housework after she returned from work, so I thought it could be a good break for her if we do the housework for her instead on Saturdays. However, her response surprised me because she insisted that she can do the housework herself. So we sat down and began talking to her and Mr L. Through our conversations with Mrs L, I noticed that Mrs L is someone who have her complaints and I can sense the fatigue in their tone when she talks about her daily life. But despite all these, she told us that she wants to continue working although she is reaching the retirement age because she will feel very uneasy if she stops being active.
When the going gets tough, the easy response for a lot of people, especially people of our generation (who grew up in an era where ideas like "You Only Live Once" and the pursue for "freedom", "choices" are overly romanticised at times) is to run away or blame someone else for our problems. We sometimes start thinking that life is the one that lets you down. Not for Mrs L. Maybe at times she will feel tired and weighed down by unexpected happenings or circumstances but the point is, she never stops facing them. I can almost hear Mrs L's mental attitude telling life to "Just Bring It!". And that is something we all can learn from Mrs L.
After visiting Mr and Mrs L, we then moved on to visit Mdm C. Mdm C is another strong lady whom we can learn a lot from. For those of you who don't know, she was a Malaysian and due to some family issues, she packed her bag and took a train to Singapore alone. She was only around 20 years old at that time. She shared with us that she went back 12 years later to visit her family. But she returned not with the intention to go back to the comforts of her family, but purely out of concern and see if her family was doing well. She later came back to Singapore and carried on with her life here. Till today, even though Mdm C is wheelchair-bound, she never stops learning, and she is learning the English language from Kai Him, who appeared halfway through the visit to give Mdm C some fruits that he bought and also to give her a mini pop-quiz on English. For the record, Mdm C knows how to pronounce English words like "Handsome", "pretty", "watermelon" and alot more.
After the visit, I also visited Mdm H at the nursing home. She is doing fine at the nursing home and still being the boss that she has always been despite being 90 years old this year. It's evident from the way she teased the nurses at the nursing home by asking random questions in English, One example would be how she hurled a random question "Saturday never go out ah?" to a young nurse who was just passing by. All these strong elderly ladies never fail to amaze me.
As volunteers, we get to see a lot of people in need of help. The knee jerk reactions that people tend to have nowadays is to help them more with their housework; give out more welfare items; give more medical subsidies; give more money to these people; see the doctor, get more medicine and the list goes on and on. But I urge you to stop for a while and think about this, do they really need all these? Sometimes we forgot that maybe after all what a person really needs is just emotional support and most importantly, our dignity and sense of self-worth.
A human (regardless of whether you are male/female/young/old/with physical or mental disability/poor/rich) is stronger than you think. And that applies to every single one of us too. No matter what you're going through now at work or in school, just remember to keep going :) Jia you everyone for the busy period ahead :)
-Vernon
When the going gets tough, the easy response for a lot of people, especially people of our generation (who grew up in an era where ideas like "You Only Live Once" and the pursue for "freedom", "choices" are overly romanticised at times) is to run away or blame someone else for our problems. We sometimes start thinking that life is the one that lets you down. Not for Mrs L. Maybe at times she will feel tired and weighed down by unexpected happenings or circumstances but the point is, she never stops facing them. I can almost hear Mrs L's mental attitude telling life to "Just Bring It!". And that is something we all can learn from Mrs L.
After visiting Mr and Mrs L, we then moved on to visit Mdm C. Mdm C is another strong lady whom we can learn a lot from. For those of you who don't know, she was a Malaysian and due to some family issues, she packed her bag and took a train to Singapore alone. She was only around 20 years old at that time. She shared with us that she went back 12 years later to visit her family. But she returned not with the intention to go back to the comforts of her family, but purely out of concern and see if her family was doing well. She later came back to Singapore and carried on with her life here. Till today, even though Mdm C is wheelchair-bound, she never stops learning, and she is learning the English language from Kai Him, who appeared halfway through the visit to give Mdm C some fruits that he bought and also to give her a mini pop-quiz on English. For the record, Mdm C knows how to pronounce English words like "Handsome", "pretty", "watermelon" and alot more.
After the visit, I also visited Mdm H at the nursing home. She is doing fine at the nursing home and still being the boss that she has always been despite being 90 years old this year. It's evident from the way she teased the nurses at the nursing home by asking random questions in English, One example would be how she hurled a random question "Saturday never go out ah?" to a young nurse who was just passing by. All these strong elderly ladies never fail to amaze me.
As volunteers, we get to see a lot of people in need of help. The knee jerk reactions that people tend to have nowadays is to help them more with their housework; give out more welfare items; give more medical subsidies; give more money to these people; see the doctor, get more medicine and the list goes on and on. But I urge you to stop for a while and think about this, do they really need all these? Sometimes we forgot that maybe after all what a person really needs is just emotional support and most importantly, our dignity and sense of self-worth.
A human (regardless of whether you are male/female/young/old/with physical or mental disability/poor/rich) is stronger than you think. And that applies to every single one of us too. No matter what you're going through now at work or in school, just remember to keep going :) Jia you everyone for the busy period ahead :)
-Vernon
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