This is the hardest decision i have ever made when I started working and moving out of my hometown Ipoh. I knew as my parents aged they will have to decide where they will be and I have to decide too. My decision to allow my parents to live on their own was forged during my years in the elderly care industry.
Talking to the elderly helped me to realisethat most elderly persons if not all wanted to die in their own home, which very often are either sold to fund their stay at centres or because their children insisted that they stay with them. Usually after long coaxing, sometimes scolding by the children and diseases that reduced their mobility, they relented and moved out.
Many still hope to go home to spend their last days. This lead me to decide that my parents should grow old at their own terms and place.
Now it is not an easy decision, it is decision that lead to many sleepless years and worries of that fateful phone call from Ipoh. Why? Because both my parents were very mobile. My dad cycled about 1 km to play his mahjong and sometimes 2 km to the government clinic in Pasir Pinji. While my mom cycled across a major road to the market every morning to have a coffee and chat with friends till late noon. My mom even cycled 500 metres to her bank to withdraw RM150 every week. Don't ask me why she didn't withdraw more, that's my mom.
In fact, my dad was once knocked off his bicycle by a car and he flew into the air and according to him he floated down as if some divine hands were holding him, well he only suffered minor scratches.
My dad cycled till he was 85 years old until one day his right knee gave way and he lost the strength to stand and walk. He lasted two more years and in that two years my mom cared for him and we later got him a physiotherapist to helped him twice a week to work his muscles. on September 16 2018 morning , passed away at the age of 87 years old.
After my dad's passing my mom then went to London with my sister for 3 months. She came back to celebrate Chinese New Year at my house in Klang and returned to Ipoh on the second day as she has hospital appointments. A week later she passed away in her sleep.
I must say that my parents were very blessed to have departed in their sleep in their own home. They gave us siblings very little to worry and now we have nothing more to worry. We can now only miss them very much.
Now not many children will have this experience and their ageing parents gave them all sorts of worries. Most of us do not know how we will aged and what our journey be liked. Is it going to be a peaceful journey or is it going to be filled with turbulents. I can only pray that children with ageing parents do not have to worry about their ageing parents and that their parents may aged at their own home.
