Rosie was in her eighties when she needed encouragement to live up a bit. My deceased dad was eighty seven when he decided he had lived enough and waited for death in front of the TV. Interestingly his mind was sharp enough to tell me how much cash he had in hand when I visited him daily : something like M$325. He did not count coins nor did he bother about one dollar bills. After three days' of treasure hunt in his room, I found it in unexpected places, besides some new notes hidden in Ang Pow (red packets usually given out to children during the first 15 days of Chinese New Year). I would be please if I could keep a mind like that to the end someday.
My mom is 86 now. She is eating well, exercising regularly and still hopeful she should recover enough for one more trip to Hong Kong after breaking both legs within two weeks, three years ago. She just came back from a town 180 Km away with my family in a hotel for three nights.
Her elder brother had Alzeimer's and it was surreal to listen to him talking about spirits playing in the court yard beneath his apartment in the town centre in bright day light. His wife and unmarried daughter told me that for about a year, he lost grip of reality and talked about unreal stuff seemingly true to him. I must say that he was quite a prolific author of fascinating, fictitious tales at least verbally. After a typical visit as I described, I felt like I just returned from listening to a professional oral story teller on the street such as during my early childhood. He passed on after a bad fall at 88.
His elder sister is a cool 90 years old. She could no longer remember her siblings nor children. However, she is mobile and physically active. She is a tiny slip of a slender old lady, active and playful. As long as someone is in the house keeping tight hold of the keys, she could not slip out and disappear. Twice my cousins had to seek police assistance to find her. Once she walked for miles and was sitting by the side of the highway to Kuala Lumpur in the late afternoon. For an ancient person with advanced dementia, she is friendly, fun and amusing to me.
My paternal grandma lived to a cool 99 and died after she could not eat for 3 days. She remained sharp to the end. She was a bit wobbly physically the last few days. According to her favourite grand daughter, my cousin whom I like, she was very good at pretending she could not remember those who were mean to her in the past. At 99, she could hear but most of the time she could not be bothered to listen, hence most people thought she was hard of hearing.
If I am not mistaken, the life expectancy of a male in this country is 78, that of a woman is 80. It does appear that all the folks I mentioned lived rather long.
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