Search:

Happy Birthday, Papa

Category: Family Happiness Aging

Happy Birthday, Papa

Posted by Monica Chia on 05-May-2021 09:30:00
Monica Chia

We would like to thank everyone who had participated in our "Share Your Thoughts, Win A Prize – A Mini Blog Contest"

Here, we showcase a winning submission from Sophia Tan.

It started in 2018. My father was 78 years old and still running a market stall with my mother. Apart from hypertension, he was in generally good health, but he was beginning to ask the same questions over and over. I was juggling two part-time jobs at that time and grew impatient with answering him repeatedly. One day I lost my temper at him, and he looked stunned, as if he was unaware that he had asked a question three times.

In November, he fell down in the bathroom. That spelled the beginning of a downward spiral for him. He had a fractured tailbone that required a hospital stay. I took the chance to ask the doctors to test him for dementia, and he turned out to have early stage Alzheimer’s.

He refused to retire, having been active all his life. Going to the market allowed him to socialise and keep his mind active. However, the debilitating disease began to show. My mother complained that he was forgetting how to count, and sometimes gave customers the wrong change. He also uttered offensive retorts to customers, something he did not used to do. In turn, my mother grew frustrated and kept venting to me at home, so I was not only dealing with one elderly parent but the vexations of the other.

To exacerbate matters, I was let go of by one of my employers. Money was tight and a constant worry for me. I had to watch how I spent every cent, but I also spent a great deal of time at home with my parents. It was during this period that I watched my father lose more and more of his lucidity. Gradually, he would forget my name, unable to utter it at the end of a sentence despite having called out to me with it for more than 40 years. He would pick up his favourite pen and struggle to recall how he used to sign his own name. His signature no longer had its old flourish of swift strokes. It became a messy whirl - random, pulsating lines of locusts invading his mental sphere.

Watching the man, who used to take me to school and run a business, lose more and more of himself as the days passed was a very painful process. In late 2019, my father suffered a haemorrhagic stroke which left him hospitalised. He passed away in November with my mother, brother and me by his bedside. The day that he died, I was offered a full-time job. Perhaps it was his way of compensating me from the other side - for the times I spent caring for him at home. In hindsight, I am grateful for the times I got to spend with him.

12 April 2021 would have been his 81st birthday, so Happy Birthday Papa. Although we can no longer spend it together, I hope you were comforted by the memories of the great times we shared.
- Sophia Tan (Age Group: 20 to 49 years old)

read: Loving my mum, a dementia patient

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of St. John's Home for Elderly Persons.

St John's Home for Elderly Persons is not a government-subvented Home and depend largely on the public's generosity to enable us to continue our work as a Registered Charity.

Please support our Home by donating generously: https://www.giving.sg/stjohnshomesg

Topics: Family, Happiness, Aging