Taking care of the elderly in the population, translated…
When we went to gather at Yu-Lang’s place a few days ago, we were watching television with her ninety-year-old mother-in-law, and all of a sudden, there was this, stench that started circling around the house, I saw Yu-Lang’s mother-in-law looking panicky, getting up, but Yu-Lang told her mother-in-law, “Mom, the television show is just getting interesting, sit back down, don’t go yet.”, then, she’d turned around to tell me, “Hsiu, go into my study, there’s an interesting book I think you’ll enjoy.”, and just like so, I was, ushered into her study, feeling confused.
Later on, Yu-Lang came into the study and explained, that since her mother-in-law became older, there were signs of her, losing control over her bodily functions, that back then, it was her mother-in-law, wanting to go, but didn’t get the time to, and that her clothes were already soiled, but the elderly still needed to have her dignity intact, that, was why she’d had her mother-in-law keep sitting there, and asked me to head into the study, so she could help her mother-in-law get cleaned off.
Yu-Lang’s explanations not only moved me, it’d also given me a lesson called, “Showing Understanding Toward the Elderly”. We will all age one day, and our bodies will eventually, start, malfunctioning, at which time, what we’d mostly needed from the younger generations is that compassion, that empathy, toward the elders, and, Yu-Lang’s wisdoms is amazing, it’s something that we can all, take from, isn’t it?
And so, this daughter-in-law helped her mother maintain her dignity at old age, and, because the elderly can no longer control her bodily functions, that still doesn’t mean that she’d needed to lose her dignity as a human being, and this woman had managed to help her own mother-in-law keep her dignity intact, by showing kindness to her, and that, is very rare in the current world.
Life, the Obstacle Course 