If you don’t have your health, physically, psychologically, and mentally, then, you got, NOTHING, no amount of money can replace these more important things in our lives here! From the caretaker’s experiences and perspectives, in the encounters of the elderly she works with, translated…
“Ms. Can you give me two hundred? I need to go find my maid!”
This was what my father stated to me at the starting stage of his dementia. Pops, who’d, forgotten everything, but how I’m his, bank account, had, caused me, to lose my rationality a whole lot. Once I’d actually hand him real money, wanted to see what he’s to do with them, he’d walked to the living room, sat on the couch, dumbfounded. As I’d walked over to beside him, as he saw me, he’d still stated that line again, “Ms. Can you give me two hundred? I need to go find my maid!”
That day, I broke down, and held on to my father and cried so hard.
I’d often imagined, that my father was a retired serviceman, he’d not made a ton of money his whole life, that’s why after he became demented, he’d, remembered the money. I’d also thought of Hsiu-Ying’s mother-in-law who’s rich, with the rents she’d collected from the properties, that was, already, shocking enough, but after she became demented, she’d started, begging for money on the streets. At first, unknown strangers would give her handouts of coins, but as Hsiu-Ying noted this, she’d told, “we’d, provided her with a room of money, and she’d still, snuck out to panhandle, it’s truly, confusing and trying to us………”
the demented elderly’s stubbornness toward money!
Once as I was helping out a demented elderly woman, after I’d, switched shift with her families, I’d found a stack of cash inside the elderly woman’s pockets, I’d told the families to get it back immediately. The member of the families told in a tiny voice, “it’s fake! My mother needed the cash on her, otherwise, she will feel, unsettled!”, then, he’d, taken that stack of fake bills, handed the stack to his own mother, and the elderly was really focused, counting them bill by bill, and, after she was done counting, she’d, flashed that smile, with only one tooth in her mouth, satisfied, she’d, placed that stack inside her pockets. Her son told her, “Mom, watch your money! Don’t lose it!”, and, as the elderly woman took so much care and concerns, putting the money away, it was, too cute and, very heart-wrenching at the same time to watch.
Nobody will say they have enough money, it’s just, that these elderly Buddhas who’d grown so old, but still remembered money, they’d made me realized, once more, that with good health, that, is the most, valuable thing we can ever have in our lives.
So, these elderly people must’ve been tried in their younger years, growing up poor, not having enough, or, some part of their childhoods and younger years fell short, that’s why they all became, too persistent over money, and this made the caretaker realized, that money isn’t that important, not when it comes to having a healthy body, and an active mind.
Life, the Obstacle Course 