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I have learned and thought about life a lot since I started community interpreting in Melbourne. There was one time I went to do a home visit interpreting job. This old couple lived in public housing. As I stepped in their apartment, I smelt odour which you can only find in old people’s room. It reminds me my childhood while I was living with my grandparents. An old lady warmly welcomed the nurse and me. After we were seated, they started to tell their story. It was the lady who developed a bowel cancer first and her husband was looking after her. While her cancer became stable and well managed, her husband was diagnosed with seven cancers, and those cancers left him incontinent. I was shocked when I heard this. Normally people will feel depressed when they are told that they have cancer. I could not imagine what life to him means at this stage. When we reach a stage of life that we cannot do most of the things we want, we cannot enjoy a beautiful day as everyone else is, and we cannot even manage our daily tasks but leave a mess to our loved ones and spend 90 percent of time traveling between hospitals and fighting with all these illness, then we may realise how important health is. We may realise that external things as money, power and social position, or even some of the internal things as pleasure, anger, sorrow and joy are less important. To my surprise, this old man refuse to use adult napkin only to save his remaining dignity. I was not in the position to judge it was right or wrong. On one hand he was dying and he wanted to keep some dignity, on the other hand, his wife had to clean all the mess. Their biological daughter was living in Melbourne, however, she didn’t visit them a lot. I understand when people get a job or establish their own family, they might be lack of time visiting their parents, however, I am sure they will be regret one day when their parents pass away, and nothing will be able to bring them back. Luckily they also have a stepdaughter who always came to visit them, and take them to hospital. Isn’t it ironic that their biological daughter care about them much less that the stepdaughter? Well, that’s life. You will never know what will happen until it happens. |
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