Angelmum
Moderator
Her wrinkled hands carefully open the box of cornflakes. Spoonful by spoonful, the same pair of hands feeds the cornflakes to her child, P. The mother is 72-years old. I met her and P on a rainy Christmas Eve.
Flashback to 1965.
She is 26 and in the prime of her youth. Married in 1959, she worked as a shorthand typist for an insurance company and enjoyed a middle class lifestyle in 1960s Singapore. She owned a car, and employed a Singaporean maid, paying her some $30 a month then. She and her husband were enthusiasts of ballroom dancing. Almost every weekend, they would attend tea dances at the Singapore Hotel off Guillemard Road or at the Singapore Chinese Swimming Club.
The next year, she gave birth of her eldest son. Her second son, P, was born in 1963. Life was good to her.
The close-knit family recently moved into a new HDB flat at Jalan Batu.
************
She calls it the greatest mistake of her life - yet it is one that she has gracefully and willingly shouldered. She vividly remembers how it happened in 1965.
It was a Thursday morning and she had woken to find that P was running a high fever. Her maid fed P some medication and allowed him to sleep it off. The fever subsided but the very next day, the fever returned. Again, her maid fed P his medication and the fever subsided, only to return the next morning. She became extremely worried and at 6 am, Saturday morning, she drove P to the A&E at the Singapore General Hospital. It was there that the news was broken to her: P had had an encephalitis attack and there was nothing that the doctor could do.
Carrying P home, she felt like she was carrying a vegetable. P’s limbs were soft and unresponsive. Her sorrow was compounded when she saw that P could not swallow any food. Only with her mother’s help was she able to coax P to do so.
Upon reflection, she tells me it was likely that her maid had fed P aspirin. The medication had only alleviated the symptoms of fever, not treated it. She regrets not sending P to the doctor the very first day the fever struck.
Since then, P has been intellectually and physically disabled.
Her life has changed drastically as a result. No longer are her weekends spent dancing or at tea dances. Instead, her life revolves around staying at home caring for P. Subsequently she gave up her job to look after P full-time as well as her other children. Her social life became non-existent.
She tells me that in the next few years after P’s attack, every doctor they saw would tell her that P would only live to 7. It was a harrowing time for her.
When P was 14, her husband’s company sponsored her and P on a trip to Australia to learn about caregiving techniques. It was the first time anyone had taught her about techniques of care, for transferring, feeding, toileting, bathing. In Australia, doctors gave her another prognosis. They told her, “P can live a long and normal life. It is just that he is different from us all and he will take a longer time to learn things.”
In a way, I think this is the way we [the majority of people] see persons with disabilities, even today. They are seen as incapable of achieving the same standard of life as any other person, and as such, unable to lead a life as long as others and are seen as abnormal. Yet if we try to see persons with disabilities as different, as only living in a different world from us, a world where they require more time to understand the way things work in ours, perhaps we would then be able to understand the world that is theirs.
It is also this - seeing P living in a different world – which recurs frequently in my interactions with her and P. During my first visit, she wanted P to sit up on the wheelchair to eat. I was prepared to help her carry P onto the wheelchair. However, she told me the right way would be to guide P to sit up and stand on his own feet before moving him over. She explained that his would allow P to learn to stand properly.
On my second visit, she, P and a few other residents were watching a DVD of Chinese New Year songs. Watching these videos would allow P to learn. She recalls playing songs of Teresa Teng and other singers to help stimulate P’s interest and attention as she does her housework in the past. Even though she likes to tell P that he does not know anything, I could see that she still sees P’s ability to learn, slowly and surely.
One question that I constantly think about, especially in between my first and second visits, is how she is able to constantly care for P. Anyone else in that position would have found it difficult and would have given up. I remember her telling me that when P was still staying at home, there was an occasion when her daughter had graduated from a university in the States and she had to make a trip there. She left P in respite care. When she returned, it was past 1am in the morning. By 7am, she was waiting to bring P home.
She also shares the reason P is staying at the residential home presently. 4 years ago, she and her husband, who is ten years older than her, felt that they were unable to physically care for P anymore. Her own mother was close to 90 and had dementia. Her eldest son was stationed in China while her youngest daughter was in the States. Her other son, living in Singapore, had his own family to look after. With no one to help her care for P, the elderly couple decided that they had no other alternatives but to send P to a residential home for the disabled. Even now, she still visits at least twice a week, staying the whole day by P’s side, talking, cajoling, touching him. As she recalls how she made the decision, she tells me, “It is with a heavy heart that I put P in the home, but I had no other choice.”
While she may have made that decision to send her son to a home, I sense that she still wishes for P to be home. I probed further and she shares that P’s room has remained unchanged since the day he left to stay at the residential home. The bed, the furniture, the fittings, the settings have not been moved.
My suspicions were proven true when she shares that the home sends a letter to the family of the residents yearly to ask if they wanted to bring their loved ones back during the festive period – for instance, Christmas and Chinese New Year. This year has been no different. She says she has received the letter from the home and wants to bring P home for the first time in 4 years. Yet, she is unable to. Without any assistance, she and her husband are unable to cope with transporting P home and taking care of him even for a day. The grateful look on her face when I offered to help belied an unspoken wish of hers for the past 4 years.
As she begins to feed P his mid-day snack, I came to a realization. Those wrinkled hands of hers feeding P his cornflakes are the same pair of hands that have carried him when he was a baby. They have carried him to the hospital when he had that fateful attack and they had carried him home after. This pair of hands have bathed, clothed, fed him for over 48 years. This same pair of hands will continue taking care of P for the remainder of her life.
By Zhuang Kuansong.
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Extracted from: Here
Flashback to 1965.
She is 26 and in the prime of her youth. Married in 1959, she worked as a shorthand typist for an insurance company and enjoyed a middle class lifestyle in 1960s Singapore. She owned a car, and employed a Singaporean maid, paying her some $30 a month then. She and her husband were enthusiasts of ballroom dancing. Almost every weekend, they would attend tea dances at the Singapore Hotel off Guillemard Road or at the Singapore Chinese Swimming Club.
The next year, she gave birth of her eldest son. Her second son, P, was born in 1963. Life was good to her.
The close-knit family recently moved into a new HDB flat at Jalan Batu.
************
She calls it the greatest mistake of her life - yet it is one that she has gracefully and willingly shouldered. She vividly remembers how it happened in 1965.
It was a Thursday morning and she had woken to find that P was running a high fever. Her maid fed P some medication and allowed him to sleep it off. The fever subsided but the very next day, the fever returned. Again, her maid fed P his medication and the fever subsided, only to return the next morning. She became extremely worried and at 6 am, Saturday morning, she drove P to the A&E at the Singapore General Hospital. It was there that the news was broken to her: P had had an encephalitis attack and there was nothing that the doctor could do.
Carrying P home, she felt like she was carrying a vegetable. P’s limbs were soft and unresponsive. Her sorrow was compounded when she saw that P could not swallow any food. Only with her mother’s help was she able to coax P to do so.
Upon reflection, she tells me it was likely that her maid had fed P aspirin. The medication had only alleviated the symptoms of fever, not treated it. She regrets not sending P to the doctor the very first day the fever struck.
Since then, P has been intellectually and physically disabled.
Her life has changed drastically as a result. No longer are her weekends spent dancing or at tea dances. Instead, her life revolves around staying at home caring for P. Subsequently she gave up her job to look after P full-time as well as her other children. Her social life became non-existent.
She tells me that in the next few years after P’s attack, every doctor they saw would tell her that P would only live to 7. It was a harrowing time for her.
When P was 14, her husband’s company sponsored her and P on a trip to Australia to learn about caregiving techniques. It was the first time anyone had taught her about techniques of care, for transferring, feeding, toileting, bathing. In Australia, doctors gave her another prognosis. They told her, “P can live a long and normal life. It is just that he is different from us all and he will take a longer time to learn things.”
In a way, I think this is the way we [the majority of people] see persons with disabilities, even today. They are seen as incapable of achieving the same standard of life as any other person, and as such, unable to lead a life as long as others and are seen as abnormal. Yet if we try to see persons with disabilities as different, as only living in a different world from us, a world where they require more time to understand the way things work in ours, perhaps we would then be able to understand the world that is theirs.
It is also this - seeing P living in a different world – which recurs frequently in my interactions with her and P. During my first visit, she wanted P to sit up on the wheelchair to eat. I was prepared to help her carry P onto the wheelchair. However, she told me the right way would be to guide P to sit up and stand on his own feet before moving him over. She explained that his would allow P to learn to stand properly.
On my second visit, she, P and a few other residents were watching a DVD of Chinese New Year songs. Watching these videos would allow P to learn. She recalls playing songs of Teresa Teng and other singers to help stimulate P’s interest and attention as she does her housework in the past. Even though she likes to tell P that he does not know anything, I could see that she still sees P’s ability to learn, slowly and surely.
One question that I constantly think about, especially in between my first and second visits, is how she is able to constantly care for P. Anyone else in that position would have found it difficult and would have given up. I remember her telling me that when P was still staying at home, there was an occasion when her daughter had graduated from a university in the States and she had to make a trip there. She left P in respite care. When she returned, it was past 1am in the morning. By 7am, she was waiting to bring P home.
She also shares the reason P is staying at the residential home presently. 4 years ago, she and her husband, who is ten years older than her, felt that they were unable to physically care for P anymore. Her own mother was close to 90 and had dementia. Her eldest son was stationed in China while her youngest daughter was in the States. Her other son, living in Singapore, had his own family to look after. With no one to help her care for P, the elderly couple decided that they had no other alternatives but to send P to a residential home for the disabled. Even now, she still visits at least twice a week, staying the whole day by P’s side, talking, cajoling, touching him. As she recalls how she made the decision, she tells me, “It is with a heavy heart that I put P in the home, but I had no other choice.”
While she may have made that decision to send her son to a home, I sense that she still wishes for P to be home. I probed further and she shares that P’s room has remained unchanged since the day he left to stay at the residential home. The bed, the furniture, the fittings, the settings have not been moved.
My suspicions were proven true when she shares that the home sends a letter to the family of the residents yearly to ask if they wanted to bring their loved ones back during the festive period – for instance, Christmas and Chinese New Year. This year has been no different. She says she has received the letter from the home and wants to bring P home for the first time in 4 years. Yet, she is unable to. Without any assistance, she and her husband are unable to cope with transporting P home and taking care of him even for a day. The grateful look on her face when I offered to help belied an unspoken wish of hers for the past 4 years.
As she begins to feed P his mid-day snack, I came to a realization. Those wrinkled hands of hers feeding P his cornflakes are the same pair of hands that have carried him when he was a baby. They have carried him to the hospital when he had that fateful attack and they had carried him home after. This pair of hands have bathed, clothed, fed him for over 48 years. This same pair of hands will continue taking care of P for the remainder of her life.
By Zhuang Kuansong.
----------
Extracted from: Here
