Written by the Center of Dementia and Alzheimer’s Research in Daling’s Tzu-Chi Hospital, from the papers, translated…
Since we were born, we’re, faced with death.
From when I was younger, I’d, come to Taiwan with my parents, and lived in the air force’s retirement village, in the urban regions of Pingdong. There were, a total of fourteen rows of houses, with twelve complexes per row, the houses are, right next to each other, and each household has about four, to five children, when one home was cooking, the aroma spread through the entire ten households, and, as one family started yelling at the children in the house, everybody hears it. There are only, the younger generations and the children, no elderly, only the living, no dead.
My father is an officer in the army, he’d participated in the uprising in Xi-An, fought in the wars to keep Shanghai, prevented Nanking from getting taken over, gone to war, without knowing if he’ll, come back, which shaped his characters.
Remembering that once as my father was drinking at a neighbor’s, he’d gotten, plastered, and, was taken home, and as he lay in bed, he’d barfed, and started crying so hard, “Mom, I’m an unfitting son, I couldn’t, take care of you!”, and that was, the very first time I’d ever seen my own father cried.
In the elderly years, we’d, lived together, Pingdong was his home in Taiwan. He’d, lived in Taipei with me, and in Hualien, then, moved to the countryside in Chiayi. The two of us lived for thirty-five years together. He had an established routine in living, and he’d, lived until he was 101, then, passed away, peacefully.
The Demented Elderly, Can Live in a Familiar Home
My mother is now, ninety, her memories are, slowly vanishing, she couldn’t, remember what had just happened, recently, and started, forgetting her life from before too. After she’d read the papers after breakfast, she’d gone to the nearby convenience stores, bought a pack of eggrolls, come home to watch some T.V., then, took her morning nap. She’d not stated she’d, wanted to go back to her own home, that home’d been, let go by her a long, long time ago. She lives with me, I am, her home. I’d gone to the marketplaces with her to shop for groceries, that, was the familiar place for her, and, there are, so many vendors who’d, greeted her passionately. She’d also, selected the best fishes. She used to be an amazing cook, and now, she’d, eaten everything, and, I’d asked her, if she will, get taken? She’d told me, that that, was the only thing she wouldn’t, take in.
People today are living longer, and, by the time the parents are, ninety, the children are, sixty or seventy. Hiring a foreign caretaker, in the nights, someone’s there, to look after our elders, and, there’s someone, to take care of the cooking, and the cleaning as well, to help out with the stresses of the children. The demented elderly, being able to live in a familiar place, with the professional care providers, with the children close by, who’d visited often. This, is probably the unique situation to just Taiwan and Hong Kong, it’s not found in Japan, U.S., Canada, or in Europe, and, caring for the demented parents, are the responsibilities of one’s own young, that is why, there’s the need, for the foreign care workers.
Setting Up for Our Elderly Years, Starting Now
But, people like me in our sixties, or seventies, taking care of our ninety-year-old elderly parents now, with the foreign nurse’s aides to help us out now. And, if in twenty years, I’d lost the capabilities to live on my own, how am I to, live? Where are my offspring, the governments? So, rather rely on ourselves, than others, start setting up one’s own elderly years right now! Like, finding a companion for old age, to live together, to eat and drink, to chat, to laugh, to help one another in sickness, to accompany one another until we die.
I believe that young, is a seventy-year-old, doing something that sixty year-olds can do; and at seventy, if you can do things that fifty year-olds can do, then, you’d be, twenty years younger, and doing something that people in their, forties are doing, you’d, become, thirty years younger, then, hitting a century is no problem. Confucius said, he’d not know that he was, an elderly, because he kept, working.
Dementia is a process of deterioration of the brain. The memories get taken away from you, little, by little, and you’d, started, showing your raw selves. Actually, the demented can see the way they are, they’d kept moving forward in their lives, it’s just, that the caretakers couldn’t, understand why the elderly are acting, like such, and used their own means of thought to interact, causing frictions and difficulties, and that the demented parents were interpreted as, hard-to-get-along with the children, and, both of you looked back to one another.
Trainings to Have a Normal Routine
As we get older, when our memories are, still intact, can we, learn to smooth the memories over, to simplify our daily routines. That was, as dementia hits us, there’s not that much we’d needed in life, and so, as we’d, started losing more and more, we can still sail through our days, with much eases, to finish our own lives, quietly. Dementia is only, a condition, it doesn’t have to be perceived as a problem, it can be noted as an illness, or it doesn’t have to. You are the ones, to decide, what dementia is to you.
And so, this, is aging with ease, with that slight adjustment of your own thoughts, and, dementia had, become the “common cold” of old age for modern day world, and, we need to, learn to cope with it, in the, most effective manner, by adjusting our systems of beliefs about it, right now, it doesn’t matter how old you are right now, just educate yourselves, on this common cold of the elderly years, and this is still NOT a “common cold” that gets treated, with a dose of cure-it-all either!
Life, the Obstacle Course 