Being old and lonely

I have a grand uncle that lives in a nursing home. If I'm not mistaken,
he's probably about 88 years old. he is related to my mother as he is
her aunt's husband. My aunt is long gone and without any children, we
are basically all he has.

Unfortunately, he had a reputation of being a unreasonable and stingy
with his money in his younger days and now that he is old, a little
senile, none of us wants to look after him.

He does have one other nephew, my mum's cousin, who currently lives in
France. He treats him like a son and has willed all his earthly
belongings to him. But seeing as he lives in France, he is unable to
look after him either!

After selling off his private property and other non-essential assets,
my uncle has a reasonable sum of cash in the bank plus a miserable
pension that the government pays to him every month. The silver lining
for us is that the cash that he has, is probably enough to see him
through till the end and being a pensionable, all major medical bills
are taken care of by the government.

My mother was given the arduous task of looking after his affairs and
long story short, because of his progressing dementia, his obnoxious
side surfaces sometimes and had pissed her off some months back. She
does not want to have anything to do with him and neither does my
sister.

Since my brother said that he was ill-treated by him when he was young,
that pretty much leaves him out as well. So the responsibility now
falls in my lap.

My role now is essentially to collect his bank statements from time to
time to check the balances and make sure that he has enough in the
current account to pay for the home charges and if it runs low, I have
to bring him to the bank and transfer funds from one account to
another.

This is what I had to do today as his current account was running low.
I was dreading this task and called the home in advance to have him
ready to go by the time I got there.

My plan was to get him to the bank, do the deed and get him back as
soon as humanly possible. After picking him up, I realized he was
indeed excited to leave the home although he had no idea where he was
going to and with whom. We were at the bank and in no time, our task
was completed.

My instincts were to rush him back to the home and be proud that my
duties were successfully executed. However during the drive there, it
dawned on me that it had been sometime since this bloke had actually
been outside the home premises. "Aiyah, nobody brings him out one!" -
The nurses words were still ringing clearly in my ear when I approached
her to sign him out. She could not find his file that had all the
people sign him out - because ... there wasn't one! The last time he
was outside the home was when my sister signed him out 2 birthdays ago
to do the exact same deed that we were doing today.

My conscience pricked me and I felt ashamed that we had left him there
for so long .. no visits, no outings.

So I asked him if he wanted to eat something and immediately saw his
eyes light up. I knew that being an Ang Moh bloke, he wouldn't have had
much of his "own kind of food" often as the majority of the residents
in the home were Chinese and they would have had mostly Chinese meals
on a daily basis.

I decided to bring him to Jack's Place and ordered Fish and Chips
complete with the full set meal of soup and dessert.

I actually thought that being as old as he is, he would have probably
only finished a quarter of what I ordered for him but no matter, I was
just happy to give him a taste of his Western food.

But when the soup came, he finished every drop of it and went through a
fair bit of the fish and chips, not forgetting that he lapped up every
possible spoonful of the caramel dessert that came with it.

I could see contentment in his eyes as he exclaimed that he was "full"!
I asked him if he enjoyed it and he responded with a big yes.

I brought him back to the home and brought him up. Before turning to
leave, he grabbed my arm and thanked me for "bringing out and treating
him to the meal". Normally I would shrug it off as everyone whom I had
bought lunch for, normally said the same. But this was different, I
could see sincere gratitude in his eyes and I knew then, that my small
gesture had meant the world to him.

I felt a mixed sense of guilt, happiness and satisfaction all at the
same time. Guilt, because I had not done this nearly as often enough
and really am unsure if I will continue to do so. Happy because I knew
that I had made a difference in someone's life that day and satisfied
with myself that I had made the conscious decision to go outside my
comfort zone and do something for someone that day.

Today .. was a good day.