DAD: LET’S TAKE A WALK

Besides his jokes, his easy going ways and his mahjong, I remember my dad’s next favourite to do things, taking me for a walk.

I had many walks with my dad ever since I can remember. Till the last days in his life, I had walks with my dad. Each walk with dad was different, each has a different purpose. Broadly I categorised my walks with my dad into five stages.

My dad started with the silent walk, and this took place when I was very young, he usually just took my hands or called me and say, “Let’s take a walk.” And we walk around my old housing estate of Jalan Brockman, Camay Park, Pasir Puteh, Ipoh. I must be around 5 to 8 years old. In those years I had many silent walks, my dad does play with me and sisters, but he was usually not talkative with me.

He was a businessman, making and selling dim sum for a living. He started in the business with my late grandfather. My family used to have a few restaurants but as time went by, many of the shops were sold as the seniors passed on and the money gotten was distributed. Dad worked hard and long hours, he usually rests once a year. So, whenever he had time, he will take me out for a walk. The walk may be silent, but dad’s presence was not. Each silent walk reminds me how important I am in his life.  

Very often the presence far outweighs words.

The next stage, I would call the showing walk. In these walks, my dad tends to show me what to say and what to do when meeting people in different places. I love this showing walks. Here, I will follow him out to the shop where he made his dim sum at 490, Jalan Pasir Puteh, Ipoh. The shop itself has an interesting history. It was once belonged to my grandfather, later he willed it to my dad. It was a long double storey shop house with three rooms upstairs where dad’s two elder brothers and families lived. The early agreement was that the brothers were to pay for the utilities but somehow the brothers who were less affluent than my dad did not do so. My dad got fed up and sold the shop to a friend and then got his brothers to rent the shop back from the friend. Family dynamics were everywhere.

I loved this part because here I get to meet all my dad’s friends and their interesting, vulgar and expletive filled conversations and stories. My dad will tell me to greet this uncle and that aunty. I will say good morning. Over time those uncles also played mahjong with dad and they called my dad ‘Sei Ngan Chai’ , directly translated ‘four eyes guy’ which was nickname for those with spectacles.

One uncle Keng told me to call my dad ‘old snake’, which I happily did. And my dad asked me to call uncle Keng ‘Pai Kah Chai’ or a spendthrift, but it sounded really bad in Cantonese. I happily called uncle Keng, Pai Kah Chai. When one is young, you can virtually get away with anything.

During this showing walk I learned how to drink and smoke. Okay dad did allow me to try both. I discovered I hated cigarette. Dad told me to light a cigarette for him, dad smoked. I happily did it and the coffee shop owner gladly passed me one cigarette, those days cigarette can be sold by stick. I put it in my mouth like dad, I lit like dad, I inhaled like dad, and I coughed, choked and my face turned blue, not like dad.

As for alcohol, dad let me drank a few pints of beer once during a free buffet meal. I was thirsty and since beer was free I had three. I was drunk and what discouraged me from drinking was I had rashes all over including parts that my hands cannot reached.

Dad liked to take me for a showing walk near our stalls which was located opposite the now burnt down Capitol cinema and on the verandah of the now famous Ipoh Salted Chicken shop. Yes , I knew the owner of the shop. Now the story of this Inn Kheng Lim salted chicken shop was that the successful boss was the most useless of all children. He did not know what to do with his life and always walking in and out of the shop. But one day during his travel he discovered the salted chicken recipe and rest as they say is history.

Back to my showing walk, my dad will walk straight to the Teochew porridge stall in Yau Tet Shin street. Dad will go straight to the salted fish jar and will take two pieces of Kurau salted fish, each the size of two chicken nuggets, for me and for him. We will both eat the salted fish like snacks, like your potato chips today. We then walked to the pasar malam or night market just to walk around and see how other businesses were doing. Dad will show me how other peopleweree also working hard for a living. He told me this as he gestured to the night market stalls;

”There is nothing wrong with what they are doing, working hard is part of life. You don’t need to follow dad and be a maker and seller of dim sum. You can do other things. But you should learn how to do dim sum because this skill is like a blanket in the winter, it can keep you warm.”

I never forget these words. This showing walk lasted until my early teens.

As I reached my mid and late teens, dad took me for another type of walk which, I called the teaching walk. This was when he started taking me out for evening walks and he will tell me stories. Stories about how he came to Malaysia, stories of him working in tin mines and got cheated by the employer, stories of him swimming across mining pool with bunched watermelons as floats. He later told me stories of how he lost the shop, how his brothers depended on him to pay for their weddings. And how his own brother betrayed his trust and stole money from the business.

I asked him once, “Aren’t you angry with your brothers for all theses things to you again and again?” My dad replied, “They are still my brothers. Friends I can choose, brothers I cannot.” From that I knew my dad’s stands when it comes to family.

My dad told me a story of how he lost our semi-detached house in Camay Park. It was because my mom’s eldest brother needed an immediate loan to pay an Ah Long who escorted my Uncle back from Singapore to collect his gambling debt. After taking a loan from a sikh money lender my dad business also suffered and eventually had to sell our beautiful house. My dad never told my mom why he had to take a loan and my mom’s mind conjured some nasty ideas of him gambling or worse, having a mistress, which, was common those days.

During this teaching walk, dad will tell me stories about him dating mom and how a man should treat a woman. He even told me that a man must take all responsibilities, whether it was my doing or not, as long as I am the head of a family or at work, we must take responsibilities for everything.

Dad taught me that money is important not the most important thing in life. Money was never for us to keep but to be used for better good.

The next walk I would call the friendship walk. After my returned from England in 1993, I had many such walks with my dad not as father and son but as friends. As usual my dad is not very talkative. We will walk around our house in Taman SPPK, Pasir Puteh, Ipoh. We will talk about the changes in the area and what was good to eat.

By then I was working in Kuala Lumpur and dad sometimes come out to stay with me in Klang. We always walked to the coffee shop near my house in Taman Berkeley , Klang. By then my dad was no longer working. We don’t talk much but just walk, like when I was young.

Very often silence was golden and it spoke volume.

The last stage is what I would term a gratifying walk. Every moment I could walk with him and take him out for dim sum and Chinese tea or to a coffee shop for his favourite Cham Glass Besar or coffee and tea mixed beverages was precious.

Again not much words just precious silent moments. Probably the most gratifying walk was when I took him back to China, specifically to his home town Panyu in Guangzhou on 8 Dec 2008. My dad 's face lit up when he saw his old village which, was more like a town than village. He left that place in 1937. He never thought he could go back before he dies.

I can still recalled my dad’s joyous cheerful smile as he walked the streets of Guangdong with his hands holding a bowl of hot beef tripes or the moment he ate sugar cane the old fashion way. He even taught my children how to eat sugar cane the old fashion way.

Those moments on his face are carved into my mind like it was just yesterday. But my dad’s greatest joy was when he saw my younger brother getting married in 2012. Now my brother was a source of dad’s penultimate worry. This younger brother of mine had many ups and downs in his life ad my dad was worried that he will suffer in life. But all that changed when my brother landed a good job and found a wife. Dad's joy was compounded when my brother became a father. In dad's mind, my brother's life and success was sealed.

During this last walk, my dad talked more than usual, he was actually sharing his feelings which, was not that evident in my earlier walks. He told me his worry for my brother and he also told me that he was concerned that no one can live with my mom if he dies first. He told me that he hoped that my mom will go first, read my earlier post about my mom.(click on the linked word). 

In this last walk, I was gratified that my dad was there to teach me that as parents we will always worry for our children and as a husband we will always worry for our spouse.

I developed this let’s take a walk philosophy from my dad. Till these days I like to take my spouse, my children, my friends and staff for a walk. It could be a silent walk, a showing walk, a teaching walk, a friendly walk or a gratifying walk. It does not matter which types of walk, there is always a lesson to be learned, a relationship waiting to be built.

AUNTY CELINE DECEPTIVE CHECK IN

A thank you note from the son of Aunty Celine

Most family members, children, brothers and sisters suffered the burden of guilt when exploring and deciding on the fate of their loved ones.

To send their loved ones to a centre is traumatic and unsettling. Here is a story of Aunty Celine whom me and the son resorting to deception to bring Aunty Celine there.
There many more such stories but lets start with Aunty Celine's.

Sometime last year June Aunty Celine's son, Jules came to me with his wife to check out m place and to discuss about the possibility of checking his mother into my centre.

Jules started by saying, my mom is okay, standard statement, I get it all the time. My mom can walk she can do certain things herself, she was a bit forgetful.
She is generally healthy with some minor medical conditions. 

I then asked Jules, she seems ok, best for her o stay at home. I personally always held on to the believe that your own home is the best place. No money can turn our centres to be etter than your home.

Then Jules slowly opened up by saying that her mom can live with his wife, they have tiffs and make his middle man position very difficult. Mom on one side and wife on the other. This i understood but that was not a good enough reason to put your mom in my place.

Jules then told me that he had to travelled to Bangkok towork for a few months and won't be able to play the middle man role. But he will come back every few weeks or month.

So Jules asked me this question, "How shall I get my mom to move into your centre?" I said, "Easy, just tell your mo that you are going to work in Bangkok ad you won't be around for 3 months." 

Then I told Jules this truth. "Women regardless of their mental conditions somehow in their hearts understand what they want for their children. Women are also very practical, children able to make money overseas is something they can grasp. So do tell her the truth."

So Aunty Celine checked in. About a month later Jules called and said, "I am back in KL I want to talk to mom, but I told her I am back only 3 months later so what can I do?"

I said, "Oh we just do face time on your phone with mine, you can just talk to your mom. Just pretend that you are still in Bangkok and make sure the facetime video don't show anything from your home."

After about 8 months, things are more settled and going smoothly.

One of our job in caregiving is to reduced the trauma and stress of family members who had to make such a decision.

For all the children out there, don't feel bad.

MY MOTHER INVENTED PATIENCE

TAKEN IN 2012 AT PJ LIVE ARTS- ONE OF MY FAVOURITE PICTURE OF MOM AND DAD

I wrote on 27 March that my son’s birth and growth taught me patience. Today I will talk about my late mom. With my mom the story is harder to tell as it has a much longer history and a bit more complex.

Let’s start by saying I love her, in fact my brother and sisters loved my mom and dad a lot. But there was a difference. With my dad it was easy, he was easy going, generally a happy guy and with him everything is ‘A okay’. He follows everywhere without imposing his will, he eats anything and virtually really, anything, his expectations of us was simple. Love each other, be happy, work hard and give your best. He is easy to live with.

My mom is a totally different person. Like my father she does not have high expectations of us and pretty much the same as dad. My mom is not a bad movie type mother, no, far from it. It was just that she has habits that makes living with her chore, a challenge and a potential family disaster movie material.

My mom was a nurse at the Ipoh Hospital Bahagia, a mental hospital. She was there for over 30 years. Now, don’t you go aww…I understand why you are posting this story. Nope, nothing like that about my mom. She is fine. Just putting things in perspective.

When I was young my mom has a habit of making cooking a home meal for 6 a cooking galore. Whenever she started cooking, I will go for jogging. She never prepared for her cooking like the ingredients that you need and place it conveniently near her. She will start by heating the wok and then put in the oil and then she will shout out for us to chop her a garlic, while the oil in the wok is heating up. Next, she will put the meat then she will call out to us to get soya sauce, black soya sauce, oyster sauce and what not, one at a time. There was once she was cooking ginger chicken and she wanted black soya sauce and she asked me to go out and buy as the chicken is still cooking.

She also has a habit of switching off any electrical switches that was on. The most memorable was when she visited me in England in the winter, she switched off my heater and light while I was showering. That puts a new meaning to cold and dark. Many parts of my body shrunk with the sudden frost.

This habit went on till the day she died. No amount of times of telling and scolding can put a dent into her mind and memory. In fact, she just replied, haha, sorry. How can one respond to that?

Later in life, when we all moved out, my mom developed a new habit. Whenever we returned for a visit, she will cook in her mind our favourite food. She will cook the broiled old chicken and served with chopped ginger and garlic. The chicken is so tough it can remove one’s dentures or give you one if you had it often enough. So, I always devised a plan whenever I went home with my family to visit. We don’t tell her we are coming until the last hour before arriving. This is to prevent her from going to the market to get the old chicken. But the next day, the chicken will still appear. Don’t get me wrong my mom was a good cook, she just got the wrong idea what we liked.

Another potentially disastrous habit was that she likes to disturb others when they cook. When I say others, I meant my wife. My wife is 168cm tall while my was 156 cm. Whenever my wife was cooking, my mom will tip toe quietly behind her and looked over my wife’s shoulder, not stand by the side like she could and should but looked over her shoulder. That annoyed my wife to the core.

I have the ‘STAND MY MOTHER’S HABITS METER’. I can stand her about two weeks staying with me. The 14 days was because that’s how long my wife can stand her habits. Then my wife will start complaining. And then I start getting irritated and then, KABOOM.

Inspite of all the above I must remind you that me, my wife, my brother and sisters, we all loved our mom and mom in law.

Another habit which was hard to live with was her ability to find and say something negative in the most positively happy situation. Like my brother’s wife gave birth and she started with, “Look baby girl so cute. Wah next time education cost is going to be very expensive.” And so many more incidents.

When my dad was alive, we never thought about what will happen to my mom. My dad was there to handle all those habits. My dad knew all her habits, but my dad loved her so much that her flaws was just a part of my mom’s beauty.

But on 16 September 2018, my dad passed away, the week of funeral, wake service and activities kept us busy from thinking about what will happen to mom. Then things settled and the four brothers and sisters started to look at the future in front with my mom. I for one knew that I can stand her for 14 days but I have promised my dad a month before he died that I will take care of her. I was regretting it already.

Now the rubber was going to hit the road. My mom will never want to live with my sister who was a year younger. Somehow my mom felt that daughter who are married should be with the other side, the in laws. My mom was funny this way. But she has exceptions to her in law rules, she somehow can live with my younger sister who is a widow living in England. My mom can definitely live with my younger brother, because he was the apple of her eyes. But I am not so sure about my sister law.

So there we are, stuck with these dynamics.

After my dad’s death, my  mom went to stay with my sister in England until January 2019. She came back to celebrate Chinese New Year and live with me for a week. She went back to Ipoh in early February 2019 and supposed to come and live with me later.

But, my mom passed away on 14 February 2019 in her sleep, on her bed, in her house, the way she always wanted. However, we discovered 8 days later that she has passed on. Some of you may asked “Why the neighbours don’t even know?”, “Can’t they smell the rotting smell of corpse?” and “Why didn’t we call her?”

Here’s her last habit that delayed the discovery of her death. She likes to switch off the volume of her phone and she also likes to just take off and go somewhere without telling us or the neighbours. So, when we called and did not get a respond, we were not surprised nor anxious until much later.

My mom’s death left me with a mixed bag of emotions. Sad that I discovered her death so late, Glad we had a good reunion dinner with her and the whole family. Sad that she was gone. Glad that I do not have to face the potential disastrous moments of living with her.

Living with my mom taught me that there are people out there who are just like. They will have habits that you cannot change. They can be loveable and loved but you can’t help hating moments when they are around.

With my mom, I learned more than patience; I learned ACCEPTANCE. Acceptance to know that I have limitations. Acceptance to know I am weak and powerless to change people. I learned that I do not need to solve all the problems caused by someone like my mom, because they are just like that and do not know it.

Most important I learned that to love someone is to learn acceptance. This thought helps me over the years working in the elderly care industry.

MY MOM AND DAD, ONE LAST WALK TOGETHER 2016

SORRY AUNTY CHOW WE CAN'T HANDLE YOU

I rejected  Mrs Chew's mom,  Aunty Chow who has dementia and recommended her to take homecare for her mom instead of daycare at our centres. I hate to do this but it was necessary. Generally many dementia cases can be managed and from my personally count about 75% are manageable. But not this Aunty Chow

The main reason in most cases that I reject was because the family members were not truthful, they  were either lying or hiding critical facts or omitting it totally.

How do we know that the potential resident has problem or the family members will be lying? Easy, it always begin with this statement, "Oh there is nothing much wrong with my, she can walk and eat herself, I just want her to have activities and company." 

Let's be honest, how many Malaysians you know are willing to pay us a few thousand ringgit if their mother or father can do things on her own? 

I am not saying that Mrs Chew is a bad person, but rather a desperate person. This article is to share the trials and tribulations of people with parents suffering from dementia. Mrs Chew knew how hard it was to care for her mother and she knew she can no longer do it herself.

Mrs Chew the daughter of Aunty Chow did not disclosed honestly her mom's conditions. And her mom's conditions were so serious that our centre is not equipped to care for such conditions without medical help. Let me take you through this.

The daughter did not disclosed her mom's medication truthfully to us and that she has quite a serious dementia condition, okay all dementia conditions are serious need care but some elderly react differently. For most cases the residents with dementia just wanted to go home. Aunty Chow will break our door if she cannot go home and she will pull the shirt of other residents and staff and go down on her knees to beg people to take her home all the time crying and shouting like a Hong Kong TVB drama series

Aunty Chow gets restless, agitated and aggressive and even verbally abusive. It took more than 2 caregivers to take care of her. Aunty Chow would walk in and out the entire centre, trying to open every door, beg anyone and intermittently cry. The caregivers lost a few kilograms following her.

Besides dementia, my experience and observation tells me that she is not just having dementia alone. I suspected that she could be suffering from bipolar. I checked her medication list given in our assessment form. Only  two types of mild sedatives to manage her dementia but certainly it does not feel enough.

I called Mrs Chew the same day  to bring all her mom's medical report and all her medications.

True enough, the daughter wilfully did not disclose a drug for a serious mental disorder giving the excuse that the Dr gave her for 'firefighting'. From my previous encounters I knew that drug will never be given for firefighting, it was meant for managing her mom's mental conditions on a regular basis.

When the daughter gave us all the drugs, and my and nurse and I were shocked to discover there were a lot of drugs in terms of quantity. on further probing the daughter admitted that she had not given her mom most of the medications for her mental health.

This explained her mom's behavior.

You see managing an elderly with dementia is a partnership between us and the family members, we cannot do it alone. Everyday is new with elderly suffering from dementia, what works one day may not work the next.

With dementia,  family's ability to pay does not equals the centres ability to manage. Money is not everything and it does not compel us to accept them. 

When it comes to care, dementia and all her related disorder are the most difficult to manage and there are not many places who can take them in. I can count with one hand once I exclude the government facilities

But why do many family members lie or withhold truth and facts from us?

Embarrassed is one of them, many family members felt embarrassed that their parents had this disease. It is also a reflection of their own fear that the condition may be genetically passed on to them.

But the most common reason for not giving medication is "afraid of side effects." Which, is true all medications that can manage mental related disease will have side effects, some more than others. I fondly remembered my Professor and mentor on mental health, Professor Maniam of UKM told me this, "Any medications without side effects has no effect."

The family members fears are real and I understand. But we also need help to manage serious mental disorder and dementia. This is a conundrum that is waiting wantingly for help but not forthcoming.

The fear of side effects caused another side effect, the mom became unmanageable.Resulting in them having to manage their mom themselves. 

If this article inspired you to explore dementia care, do go ahead and find out more. It is such an important segment of aged care that so few indulged in that many family members are left without hope.

SUICIDE IN A MOMENT OF INSANITY

My fascination with suicide started in July 2014 when a 16 years old youth under my care committed suicide. She hung herself with her belt tied to her ceiling fan.

I was devastated.

A publisher friend told me that many of her writers currently are writing about suicide, depression and mental illness . I shared with her my research conclusion that it takes a moment of insanity for any individuals to consider taking one's' own life. Others may have other conclusions.

Let's talk about this 16 years old who decided in a moment to hang herself using her belt on her ceiling fan. She locked her door the night before and only in the morning her mom discovered her, hung from the ceiling fan.

Prior to her suicide, this young girl, Denise, was off the social grid in my youth group for two years. Her mom didn't understand what happened because she just suddenly turned into a recluse after her 13th birthday. But suddenly in June 2014 she joined us in a group outing to Taiping. Her mom was happy, thinking that she has finally came out of her reclusivity. We had fun and good chat and Denise even mixed around with everyone. Two weeks later tragedy struck.

I was told later by a suicide expert friend that the trip with us was her way of saying farewell.

Apparently there were signs of her mind turning dark, dark as in a bad movie evil controlled dark. Her teacher showed her mother an essay. A simple essay where student just continue from the opening sentence. In this essay the opening line was, "As I was walking home one night..." Her essay  went a totally different way that's unusual. She talked about her mother had an accident, landed in hospital and she visited her. She said she saw The Reaper, the forebearer of death standing by the corner waiting for the time to bring her mother home. "I talked to the Reaper and the Reaper invited me to join him and he told me death is good." Denise wrote.

That was in April 2014. After the funeral, I spoke with her mother and she told me that she was into reading books related vampire, spirit and occult. She loved to watch horror movies too.

What triggered me to search was when I heard a Christian commented that those who commited suicide will go to hell. I was disturbed and not angry at such a comment and in my mind, "Is it really true?" That's when I started my research.

I approached it carefully knowing that i am not the expert and suicide is an intricate subject.I adopted the medical, psychological, theological, philosophical and cultural context approach. Read a number of books on death and suicide and I discovered that it is not easy for us to commit suicide.

You and I are built with three failsafe devices to prevent us from commiting suicide.

The first fail safe prevention is that ' We are born with eternity in our hearts'. In short we are all born to seek eternity , to live longer, looks prettier and younger. Even the products in the market focus on helping individuals look young, feel young and be young again.

For one to commit suicide he/she must break this first failsafe.

In the book of Ecclesiastes 3:11 the wise king Solomon says, ".....he(God) has put eternity into man's heart....."

Even if one do not believe in God agrees that they wanted to live longer and will not just choose to die.

The second failsafe is that " We are born with moral law in hearts'. We actually knew what is right. We are born with a moral compass.

It does not matter where we are from, we all instinctively knew what is right and wrong. We somehow knew that killing ourselves is not right. We knew killing others is not right, we knew killing ourselves is not right, we knew that taking bribe is wrong. We somehow knew. In Jeremiah 31:33 states that God made a new covenant where he implanted his law into man's heart.

The final failsafe prevention is 'Pain'.

We all hate pain, we disliked the discomfort that pain gave us, yet in my research i understand this not from a medical stand point but from a philosophical one. Pain is a double edge sword, it is something we do not like but it is the failsafe device that kept us. We see fire , we move away from the heat. We are extra careful with knifes so that we do not cut ourselves accidentally. We have five senses to help us navigate through traffic jams.

Therefore for someone to actually decided to commit suicide he/she must suffer a momentary insanity. To break the three failsafe devices one has to be crazy for that moment to leap off a twenty storeys building.

The challenge for us that this momentary insanity crosses many people's mind daily. it has even crossed my mind sometimes when I struggle with my life working long hours, paying bills , school fees, supporting my late parents , kid decided not to study, wife angry with you for reasons sometimes you do not know. I had moments where i felt alone in this world, alone at work, alone at home. I had moments where i wonder what the 'bloody ' heck am I working so hard for when the world gave me nothing but troubles, worries, being scolded, being blamed. Even the state of the the country affairs and our bleak future especially when age is catching up with me and that the Government basically doing nothing constructive to provide for the aged. The pain that i sometimes get with my gout and the after exercise nagging pain. All these take a toll on me.

These had caused me to entertain the thought 'Death isn't so bad' idea.

I am not having such thoughts now. What I am saying is I don't think I am alone in this. Having such suicidal thoughts occasionally. Entertaining the idea of death is good.

Good thing is that I am generally a happy person, which helps and there are two powerful tools that helped me to snapped out of such thoughts.

The first tool is that I have a purpose in life, which is to help as many people as I can. I know that I am not here to live a life for myself but for others.

The other is my passion for comedy, through my comedy I transferred my worries and fear and anger onto the paper and then to the stage and look at worries, anger and fear with a new lense of humour.

If you had suicidal thoughts, take a breather, you are probably having a momentary insanity, which like fart shall pass. Just hold your breathe long enough.

May you find peace amidst your storm.

UNCLE: I DON'T WANT TO GO HOME.

Festivals in Malaysia are aplenty. Chinese New Year, Hari Raya, Deepavali, Christmas and the list goes on. These are also moments we like to go home to be with our family.

At the care centre we encouraged family members to bring their parents home, to see old friends perhaps even for the last time. Not being morbid here, just candid. For the elderly every meet  could be the last time one is seeing their relatives, children, friends, brothers and sisters. 

But many old folks just don't like to go home, they like to stay in the centre. I asked them why don't they want to go home. They gave me various reasons, like:

"I don't want to trouble my children to take care of me."

or

"I don't want to follow them to visit relatives, so troublesome."

or

"Too many people in the house."

The last one got me thinking and over time I analysed the reasons for, " Too many people in the house."

Here are some of the reasons why old people like to remain in our assisted living centre for CNY: In fact they don't want to meet any people or relatives because:

1. THEY MEET PEOPLE WHO ASK QUESTION THAT MAKE THEM FEEL STUPID

People who claim to be the relatives always asked the elderly folks "You remember me?" or "You recognise me or not?"

Of course he/she cannot remember you, you have gone from fat to ugly. I mean seriously they only see you once a year or less.

It is really painful for them and even embarassing  when they honestly cannot remember their relatives or loved ones. Please do not subject them to such torture.

2. THEY MEET PEOPLE WITH DEMENTIA

One question that makes the person who ask looks demented is, "Uncle/Aunty do you know who am I?"

Hello if you do not know who you are check your own IC la, don't ask an elderly confused uncle.
'Remember' is a swear word for an elderly. It falls under the category of expletives because the elderly do feel offended somewhat as they struggled to search their distorted internal drive.

3. THEY HAVE TO ANSWER A QUIZ QUESTION ABOUT THE RELATIONSHIP.

There are relatives who tells the elderly folks, "Hi uncle i am your second brother's wife's cousin who is married to aunty Ming next door who is now living in UK. And you use to buy me the five cents coconut sweets." And then you expect the old folk to remember your name and who you are.

4. THEY HAVE TO DEAL WITH THIS 20 TIMES A DAY FOR 3 DAYS OF CNY.

People think such quiz and questions are helpful for the old folks brain, no , it only confuse matter further. In fact the elderly feels embarrassed for forgetting something which, they think is so important.

Therefore, when you meet your elderly uncles and aunts and  if you see any elderly  in your family just give a big smile, a big hug, speak happily and tell your name and if he/she remembers great, if not move on.

Don't frustrate an old folk. 

PITIFUL FAMILY MEMBERS

Being in the elderly care industry for 20 years helps me to realise that the hardest people to work with are the family members, their spouses, children , relatives and so on.

There are many dynamics to their behaviours and the hassle some of them gave the care organisations and the staff.

As carers, we get blamed for injuries, bedsores, bruises, sickness and general decline of the elderlies health. We get accused quite often for being incompetent, being called stupid. Accused of stealing. Get scolding for occasional missing medication or wrong timing. Being scolded for giving the food which the family members decreed out of bound for their loved ones.

And you know what, it is ok with me and the carers because we knew one thing that the family members don't, even though they think they knew.

We know why the family members get anxious and why they behave the way they did.

There are many reasons:

1. They wanted us to do what they wanted to do. This is a case of expectations. Many family members have a mental image of what kind of care and how their loved ones are to be cared.

2. They want things to happen now. Which of course very often it does not happen that way, so they get frustrated.

3. Most are taught and educated with how problems should be solved, cause and effect. This problem this solution. But reality with elderly and care is not a straight line. This leads to frustration.

4. Their ego dented with the knowledge that with all their wealth, intelligence and knowledge they need to let a much lower qualified, lower salary individuals to care for their mother. Afterall in this society , wealth, big cars and house equals ability and success. And with all those success they cannot care for their parents.

These family members and children are the most pitiful and in need of compassion.

For the readers of this post please do not judge them but pray for them. They do live their parents or spouse.

For caregivers, please continue to love and uphold the family members, they need the care and love too.

The only way to reduce their anxieties is to be the best caregivers we can be . One who understand the elderlies, one who also understand the dynamics of family members.

May the peace of the good Lord be with us all.