I’m not ready! Despite all my years of nursing training, I’m not ready! Despite working in elderly homes and hospitals overflowing with geriatric patients, I’m just not ready!

Not ready to see this superwomen, a 89-year (probably 92 years) old lady who not only raised 5 kids of her own, she single-handedly raised me and my two cousins, her grandchildren, in the harsh underdeveloped times and lacking resources, now so suddenly deteriorating in health. Just yesterday she endearingly reminiscences the times she went traveling with me and my parents, traipsing through State by State as dad drove 8 hours a day. And how I’d sit by her side at the man made lake at her house in China and listen to her talk for two hours straight, sharing all her worries before we moved to Canada. This women who survived through times of war and scraping bark from trees for food, of selling cigarettes to foreigners and getting caught by the police, of begging the headmaster to let her try Grade 7 despite missing few years due to lack of money, of making her way down to Hong Kong for an empty promise of an education, of working 16 hour shifts and walking home for one penny a day without complaint, of bargaining with her aunt to learn a skill trade before she got married, of barely making do with expenditures then deciding to risk it on buying their own apartment on a 5 year mortgage, raising 5 children and putting them through secondary and post secondary, then raising her children’s children and taking 3 kids out on grocery shopping endeavors all at once, providing round the clock care for her also aging husband.