Growing Old & Sick

We all grow old. From the time that we enter this world bawling and kicking, we are already growing older by the moments that go by.

It may seem a long time, from cradle to childhood through adolescence to adulthood and on to old age. Some have a long journey in between, making it to the celebrated milestones of 70, 80, 90 and a marvellous 100 years of age.

If you have good health all the way, then life is worth celebrating. If you are dogged by illness and bitter experiences, short-changed in many ways, then you might think about the hand that life has handed you. In general most people lead an average life, i.e. they have gone through the experiences of the various stages of life, enjoy fairly good health although the symptoms of old age have crept in slowly. Nevertheless they are still mobile and able to make the best of things.

I have been saddened by news of friends battling cancer; their courage and persistence in battling this scourge of modern times is to be lauded. If one has never been in a situation where one has been in contact with cancer warriors, one will never know the courage and the hell they go through.

I lost my parents and two sisters to this insidious disease. Their sufferings can never be told in words but their courage in facing the enemy is exemplary. They were truly warriors and their faith in the Lord was strong. Sometimes I can't help wondering why this had to be their end, why their productive lives had to end in such a way.

Is it because the cancer cells that exist in our bodies had been triggered into wild proliferation by something in the environment, by the food ingested, by the air breathed in?

We have abused Mother Nature to such an extent that we are victims of our own doing. More and more young people have succumbed to this disease. It attacks the various parts of our anatomy and the sense of helplessness that we feel in its presence is overwhelming.

Treatment is another battle all the way. The drugs currently in use debilitate the body and could be causing more harm in the long run. The disease simply whittles away the body even as it runs amok within the system.

When will we be able to conquer the ills faced by mankind?

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Time

I just went through my email and just realised how much of my time it has taken to read and to reply some of them. How true it is the saying "Time and Tide wait for no man".

Have you ever stopped at the end of each day to take stock? To look at how productive you were that day? What did you do? Was it worthwhile spending the time doing it?

I have heard people wishing that there are more than 24 hours in a day so that they can get through what they want to do. I guess things can be divided into " What you want to do" and "What you have to do".

The latter will have to come first and then you can go ahead to do what you want to do.

For retirees, I guess they have more time for the "what you want to do". Or do we really? I'm a retiree and I remember telling myself, " Oh, I'll do that when I retire." Now that I've retired, I find that I still don't have enough time to do what I want to do.

I want to read more, especially the different types of books that I'm interested in; I want to write poems, I want to write, full stop. I want to go back to experiment on baking, I want to go back to my handicraft.......oh so many things that I want to do now that I've retired.

Instead I find myself chasing time because there is still a lot on the "what I have to do" list. That eats into the time I thought I would have, having retired. Mind you, I've slowed down a great deal and I've become lazy too. What I could do very quickly say, 2 decades ago now takes twice as much time. So that steals away some of the time at my disposal.

Slowing down is a necessity as there is the fear of falling when things are done quickly and when one is old, bones don't heal as well or as fast, not when one is a diabetic to boot. I remember a friend's mother who fell and broke her hip bone and never recovered after that. She became bed-ridden and her health just went downhill very fast. Besides, one is not as agile as before.

Looking around at the things I've accumulated all these

years is such a pain. How can I ever get rid of the clutter?

Where to begin? As my brother-in-law said, one's

treasures is another's trash! We were chatting about the

past, how we collected souvenirs on our travels and how

much we cherish them, proudly putting them on display.

He asked a good question. Do you think our children will

appreciate these momentoes? Probably not as they do

not hold any significance for them. To the collector, they

evoke memories of the holiday they had. To others, they

are probably dust collectors that should be binned. In

other words, thrown away!

So now when I travel, I do not collect anymore souvenirs,

except for small gifts that are easy to carry home and to

give to family members. Trinkets for my daughters and

local edible treats that we can savour together with family

members when we get back home. Photographs are a must

as they capture the places that we've been to. On the other

hand, what will happen to the hundreds of pictures that

have been taken after we pass on to the other dimension?

They would have become more clutter.

Back to the question of time. When will the time come when we have to leave this world for the next one? How much time is there left? Is there enough left to let me do what I have not yet done?

On this note I think I had better do what I have to do and then do what I want to do, one thing at a time, slowly or fast, it doesn't really matter. What matters is to enjoy what one does and to treat each day as if it is the last. Right now it is time to start preparing dinner or there won't be anything to eat this evening!

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Young Talent

Each of us is unique and we bring with us our individual talents. No one is dull or stupid or slow or whatever......

I can still remember when I was a young child at school, some teachers used to call us "stupid", "useless", "good-for-nothing", "idiot", etc. etc. I remember being hit on my back with the long ruler that one teacher used to have in her hand all day long. She would also rap our knuckles if she thought we were not fast enough in our work. Why did she hit me? It was because I was hunched over at my desk! So the punishment was to insert a long ruler through my arms across my back so that I would have the "correct" posture, i.e. to sit straight up. Ouch! It did hurt at first. Not as bad as being rapped on the knuckles with the edge of the ruler though.

Nowadays students take offence if the teacher were to utter such words like "stupid" or "idiot". One can't blame them. Who likes to be called stupid or an idiot? No one is stupid, no one is an idiot. We are blessed with unique talents. An autistic child has a talent too, it only has to be discovered. A friend has an autistic son who is very hyperactive but he is very good in mathematics. Another child is gifted in music.

I had boys in my school who were not academically inclined but they were very good cooks and had better presentation skills than the girls in cooking competitions. A few were very good with computers ( they learned on their own as we didn't have computer lessons in the curriculum then) and today they have their own computer stores in shopping complexes.

Today I received an email from my brother-in-law which contained a video clip of three young teenagers who have such beautiful voices. These teenage tenors reminded me of the late Pavoratti, the great tenor whose voice thrilled millions. I would like to share this clip with you and I hope you are able to hear their song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqUkUjeF4-c

Such talent makes one spellbound.

I earnestly hope that all of us will strive to look beyond the exterior to discover the hidden talent or the latent potential of a person that is waiting to be unleashed.

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Turn of the century grandmothers

Those of us who became grandmothers at the turn of the last century are quite a different breed from those of yesteryears.

I remember my own grandma who hailed from China. She had bound feet also known as lotus feet but her feet were not as tiny as those of my other grandmothers. She said that when her feet were bound, it was so painful that she could not stop crying and her mother took pity on her and released the bandages binding them. However the damage was done and they were disfigured and swollen. Having bound feet was de rigeur for girls from families of some standing. It was considered a sign of beauty. Only maid servants did not have their feet bound as they had chores to carry out and they had to serve their masters and mistresses. My grandma's feet caused her much discomfort especially when she had to walk long distances. In the days of the nineteen fifties there were no taxis, only rickshaws or trishaws. Sometimes she used a trishaw after buying vegetables and other food from the wet market. The distance from the market to her home was too far for her to walk.

She was usually dressed in either grey or blue tops with black silk trousers. Her hair was combed into a bun behind her head. She was a housewife responsible for the cooking and washing and other chores, making the house a neat and tidy home for my grandfather and uncles. The only place that she went to, other than the market, was to the temple, to pray and ask for blessings for the family. Looking after grandchildren was also part of her responsibilities.
She looked after five of my siblings as we are a big family.

These days, grandmothers of my generation are a far cry from my grandma's. We are educated, we have brought up our children and discharged our duties as best we could and most of us do not live with our adult off-spring. We are very independent and mobile. We go wherever we want and whenever we want. It is not unusual to see grandmothers in line dancing classes, aerobics, yoga, even jogging in the parks. There are also grandmothers who run their own businesses and there are those who jet set all over the world. Some of us are very fashionably dressed and well accesorised. We do not wear our hair in buns on our napes but our crowning glory are often coloured and high-lighted. We take good care of our skin and our looks oftentimes belie our age.

Many of us however, do tend to drop whatever plans we have when our children send an SOS and we respond immediately. Most times it is to help them with their newborns and to babysit when they need some time off. This is perhaps the only thing we have in common with our sisters of yesteryears. Lending a helping hand when needed.

I remember when my daughter was expecting her first child in the UK. We went there with all the requisite herbs, etc so that when the baby arrived, we were on hand to look after her. Her dad boiled water with the herbs every morning and when the water had cooled to a suitable temperature, he would lug it upstairs to her bathroom so that she could have a nice warm scented herbal bath that would take the "wind" out of her system. He would also walk to the supermart to buy fresh range chicken so that I could double-boil it with herbs to make a nutritious soup for her. Yes, we looked after her during her confinement and helped with the new baby boy.

He was quite colickly and had difficulty sleeping and my late sister, who was just as excited as we were over the new arrival, the first of the new generation, flew to Cardiff where we were, with a "sarung stand", a Malaysian cradle so to speak, where a "sarung" ( piece of cloth with sides sewn together ) was suspended on a spring attached to the stand and the baby was put into the sarung and rocked rhythmically. The sarung held the baby snugly and he soon fell asleep. Should he wake, all we had to do was to gently pull the sarung in an up and down motion and he would drop off to sleep again.

Just as grandchildren brought joy to grandmas of yesteryears, so do they now bring joy to us, the new breed of grandmas. No sacrifice is too great for our grandchildren although one can hear an occasional grumble. Sometimes we hear of grandmas who throw up their hands in horror at the prospect of looking after the new babies and telling their offspring that enough is enough, they've looked after their kids and now that they are adults and parents themselves, it's only right that they should look after their offspring, although a helping hand will be there on occasion.

Whatever it is, we new generation grandmas have a lot to live for, a lot to thank for and we are ready to help when the need arises. Only do not expect us to be on call twenty four seven. We have earned the right to our own lives and R & R. Kudos to us all!!

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