As I walked home with my takeaway lunch and newspaper from the wet market yesterday morning, I noticed an old frail-looking woman walking along the roadside pavement with her husband. She seemed exhausted and was trying to sit down on a nearby steps. She laboriously lowered herself down with his husband supporting her, and managed to sit down.
Then somehow she toppled over and fell to the left side. I walked over to see if they need help as her husband started to try getting her up. Evidently they were having difficulty, so I helped holding her left side of the body and arm to bring her back upright. I noticed then she was bleeding from her left temple from the fall and her left arm was in a some sort of sling. The latter unfortunately I didn’t notice earlier, since it may explain her protestations in dialect that I didn’t understand when I was supporting her left arm. In any case, we managed to get her to sit on the pavement now. That was all she could manage, so I sat myself on the steps behind her to prop her back with my knee and had my arms guarding both sides of her body should she topple over again.
An Indian guy nearby also took notice and was concerned. However the problem was both of us couldn’t communicate with the old couple. They didn’t seem to understand much English while my Chinese was too broken to effectively talk to them, and their dialect sounded more like Cantonese, which I had no grasp of.
The husband tore a piece of my newspaper to wipe off the wound, which fortunately was not flowing freely. I tried to suggest in as much as I can to either get a band-aid from a nearby store, or more appropriately, to help bring her to a clinic which was merely 30 meters away. He refused, and if I understood correctly, she just came back from the doctor, presumably where she had her arm set in the sling. I offered to support her and walk her home, which fortunately was just a 100 meter away, but again she declined.
It was at that point when I noticed how bad her condition was. Sitting behind her as I propped her, I could smell something like how I smell during one of my lazy periods when I put off showering after a workout session – only the smell she emanated was much stronger than mine. Her skin was a morbid greenish yellow, with a big patch of dark red on her left forearm – either a bruise from her fall or some other wound – which was all the more scary since it contrasted starkly with the rest of her colourless skin. And she was skinny. I’ve heard and seen of people who are skin-and-bone; this was the first time I saw one in person, and touched one. It was not a nice feeling. When I tried to hold her, offering to lift her up to stand (which she steadfastly declined), I felt like holding leather sheath over a stick. She was sadly so skinny – but somewhat fortunately in this case – that even I dared to consider carrying her all the way back to her HDB apartment.
But the problem was more of her refusing any assistance. By now the Indian guy had left since I was attending to them, and there was no help he could offer (or they would accept). She insisted on standing up on her own. It was a heartbreaking sight, seeing her ask her husband to extend a forearm for her to hang on to, and she then exerted all her strength using her one good arm trying to haul herself up, not moving even a centimetre the whole minute until she just gave up in despair. I offered to go to the clinic and see if I can borrow a wheelchair, but communication barrier thwarted me.
At this point a middle-aged lady happened along, thank goodness, and helped talking to them. Apparently old granny here had low blood pressure – even worse for someone trying to stand up. The lady though had no much better luck than I did in convincing them to accept our help. We witnessed the granny’s ultimately futile attempt at hauling herself up another 3 times, punctuated by long period of rest and further stoical despair. I despaired, since I gave her zero chance of success – standing up from virtually squatting down requires much leg strength, that I knew she didn’t help. Even offers to simply lift her to sit on the steps, which would ease her effort to stand up, was declined. Handphone for them to call someone their comfortable with to assist them – no, thank you. Another passer-by came along, suggested getting help from the police at the station nearby – not surprisingly declined. I felt we were running out of options in the face of stubbornness – or was it pride?
We were finally saved from the deadlock when another man passed by transporting cardboard boxes on a platform cart/dolly. He jettisoned the empty boxes (bar one with content), and offered to wheel granny home. What made the difference was: granny could still feel self-sufficient by declining offers to lift her onto the dolly, and dragged herself, with much difficulty but successfully, onto the platform. The man wheeled her onwards, the woman took care of my food and paper as I went to ensure that if there was problem with the dolly going into elevator, at least there was extra manpower to bring her up. Fortunately there was no problem getting up, and I only was needed to support her a short while as she propelled herself off the dolly onto a sofa once she was home – a spacious but largely empty 4 room HDB apartment.
It was saddening to see someone like the granny living in such hard condition in our society. And what more, judging from her adequate though sparse home, she would not be amongst those in worst condition. These people need to be able to get the assistance they need to be able to live life with some meaning. Though I don’t speak Cantonese, I roughly guessed one of the words she uttered as she asked us helpers to get back to our life and not to mind her was that she was just waiting to die.
But equally maddening was her rejection of assistance. This brought to my mind what a minister said (memory failed me as to who and when) that the government could provide all kind of assistance scheme, but they couldn’t shove it down to people and the needies need to come forward and apply for help. While I recognise this challenge of giving help to people who don’t want them after this exercise, asking them to apply for help is not likely to help ensure those in need (and in need to spare whatever little pride they still have) get the assistance they need. And I’m not even going into the communication barrier with forms.
The bottom line is that these people still need to be helped. I couldn’t imagine leaving the granny where she lay despite her rebuffs. All of us there would continue finding ways to offer her help until something suitable was found. Eventually what is needed is a creative solution – in this case, something effective that also allow the help recipient to feel still capable of doing something for herself.
I hope the government and various social organisations would be thinking and working along this line also. If nobody is going to be left behind as the PM said, nobody should be let to stay behind even if that’s what they have consigned themselves to.
Scratchpad 
26 February 2007 at 4:51 pm |
Though I don’t speak Cantonese, I roughly guessed one of the words she uttered as she asked us helpers to get back to our life and not to mind her was that she was just waiting to die.
Sad. But couldn’t she spare a thought for her husband? Though he’s not necessarily frail-looking like the wife, I guess he’s very likely as old as well. And to hear your loved one whom you spend years living together saying that he/she is just waiting to die is surely hurtful.
26 February 2007 at 10:42 pm |
Some old people have their pride too . But It heartwarming to see people like you around!Hope there is more out there.
27 February 2007 at 12:44 am |
A very heart warming episode.
I have also seen blind people who violently refuse help up onto the bus and old people who (clearly in need of a seat) angrily refuse seat offers. But that can’t be an excuse not to help. We could and definitely should help in perhaps more subtle ways like not starting the bus until the blind man has settled down on a seat, and, silently stand up and move towards the exit as the old man reaches the seat.
Insisting on applications for assistance schemes is like asking a blind man to ask out loud for a seat in the bus. That’s not very helpful in making Singapore a more gracious society.
27 February 2007 at 7:51 am |
I think that you might have misunderstood the old lady. Your initial assumption was correct. Trying to raise somebody with low blood pressure would have led to insufficient blood to the brain, thus it was more physiological (or natural) for her or someone else to drag her onto the trolley. Now if you had offered her that, she might have agreed. The human body is a marvellous thing.
27 February 2007 at 6:56 pm |
The world need more caring souls like you. People with hearts. 🙂
27 February 2007 at 11:24 pm |
The world needs more caring people like you. People with hearts.
Our country needs more caring leaders…..not leeches who keep telling the needy people to quit the “crouch mentality”.
28 February 2007 at 1:18 am |
a_x: I guess intense emotion may overwhelm rationale in many if not most people. Or simply that most people by nature think more of themselves than of others, however close.
tinymutz, yang_man, domtheclown: thanks 🙂 I was glad myself to see quite a number of other people caring and lending a hand at the time.
oiying: very apt analogy.
Paul: I am guessing that low blood pressure was not the reason she refused help, because she was trying to stand up herself (before the trolley was in sight), which would give her the same problem. But perhaps there were other reasons than pride for her to reject help, I couldn’t know for sure. The woman who helped speak to the granny said she was stubborn – but again, we won’t know the cause I guess.
2 March 2007 at 6:01 pm |
Agreee with oiying and domtheclown completely! Having said that, old people are very stubborn, and they refuse to believe they are useless. Thus, by offering to help, the old lady will refuse because she would view herself as someone useless, a burden to others. Which was why even with her husband, she would refuse help.
But the world and society do need more caring people like you. It is not many who would have done what you did. Most would just walk away or feign ignorance. And for that, I am touched, by your story, and what you did.
2 March 2007 at 8:18 pm |
quoted from juphelia: …and they refuse to believe they are useless.
sheesh. just because you believe that you’re useless, it doesn’t mean that the rest of old people must feel the same. seriously now, are you implying that old people ought to believe that they are useless?!
they. are. NOT. useless.
3 March 2007 at 9:55 am |
Perhaps she/he did not express herself properly. I do not get the feeling that she was looking down on the ageing population. The elderly are not useless but they are often in need – the circle of life, I suppose. It’s highly probable that they had at some point contributed their fair share to others and it is rightly so that they receive help where appropriate. One of the better ways to ensure help is provided is to ‘force’ the government agencies by providing detailed information to them and then checking back to see if the necessary assistance was provided. We have to use the system against it.