Taking Care of the Elderly

We have been told many a times that it is the Asian value to care for our elderly parents especially when they are infirmed and senile and the term bandied about is filial piety.

But recently there have been a number of incidents reported in the Press where parents or one of them have been left on their own either to roam the streets or placed in the Old Folks home without bothering to visit them or seeing them even on festive days. Even in my neighbourhood of the so-called elegant satellite city to the Federal capital there is a mushrooming of nursing homes and centres for abandoned old folks run by individuals or charities.

Last week I went to visit a close relative at a privately run centre for the elderly and the infirmed about half an hour drive from my house. I only came to know about his presence at this particular home by chance, when I met his brother-in-law at a wedding function in Taman Tun Dr. Ismail.

Before going I enquired from the owner of the centre where the place is and when can I pay a visit. The good lady answered me giving the directions from my house and said that I can pay a visit at any time. I took along my 90 year old father and my family one fine morning to visit the place because he had not seen my uncle ( cousin to my dad) for many many years. Upon reaching the centre, I took out the wheelchair from the car boot and gave it to my sister for her to wheel my dad up the slight slope to the centre. While I was parking the car, one of the centre's helper opened the gate and allowed my wife and sister with my father being wheeled into the house. When I entered the house after them, I found my uncle seated on a sofa and I could not recognise him initially. He is so frail and looked very different when I last saw him several years back. He could not talk and he could not recognise any of us. The helper told us that he could not even recognise any of his siblings except for the youngest sister of his.

Instinctively my tears were shed when I went to inspect his room where a bedridden inmate is placed next to my uncle's bed. I stroke the person's head and he lay there as helpless as a baby, complete with diapers and unable to speak a word. It was such a pitiful sight and I prayed that I would not live to such a situation, God Willing.

We were told by the helper that ' Tok Misai ' the nickname given to my uncle, his condition is such that he suffered insomnia and he fell a few times at his house in Seremban which needed a few stitches and probably contributed to the hapless situation where no one could take care of him anymore. I was informed that his wife is now with her daughter and she is also not in good health.

We spent about two hours trying to relate to him but to no avail, though he smiled when I told him that we are from the same roots, ' Tambusai' because he was the first pro-tem Chairman of our family association called ' BERKAT' as the acronym. The last time I met him, we could talk about the activities of the Association and he was happy that it was still running after its formal inception in 2002. I then assumed the post of the President for two terms and I resigned voluntarily a few months before the end of my term for personal reasons.

I told my father that God Willing he would not be send to such a centre no matter how well run the place is, because I have a responsibility and duty to take care of him till his last days. And I pray that I would not have to be an inmate of such a centre because all the faces whom I saw there were evidently sad ones and hardly any who smiled. Such a fate hopefully would not befall any of my family members, now and ever.