Theresa Tan’s GenerationGrit features a nurse this week, Fiona Ke, 32.
Fiona recounted: “My dad abandoned us when I was around five or six years old and my mum struggled to raise the three of us. I was the youngest.”
Her family struggled financially, worrying about when the power supply would be cut off in their four-room flat. Her mother had to borrow money to pay for the electricity bills.
Without electricity, Fiona and her siblings had “to study by the window next to the common corridor to catch the light.”
When her dad was living with them, he was physically abusive, and her mother suffered the brunt of it.
“I felt threatened all the time. Having to witness domestic violence as a kid was frightening. I felt that I hated my dad. Why did he bring so much misery to us? Why did he not give us a single cent? Why was he violent?”
Over time, she received help from Touch Community Services by way of tuition and financial aid.
In her early thirties, Fiona was advised by doctors to undergo surgery because, as she recalls, “the hole in my heart grew to between 2.3 cm and 3 cm.”
The doctor said that “if I did not have the surgery, my condition would worsen and I might have heart failure by the age of 40. Fiona went ahead with surgery at 32.
From a nurse, she became a patient and it was a good change of roles for her.
She said: “It was a good decision (to go for the surgery). Not only did it cure me, but it allowed me to experience, as a patient, what a difference we nurses can make with our care. I also gained more empathy for patients.
After my recovery, I tried to be more patient and to understand them, especially when they behaved unreasonably.”
Fiona married at 29, and her husband currently works with her in the same department as an audiologist. He “suffered hearing loss after a throat infection as a child” and he wears a hearing aid.
Lesson? One.
Like all people featured in GenerationGrit, they have overcome their own life’s trials in their own unique ways. Fiona is no different.
She is a fighter and she has been volunteering to help others. She helped out in mobile clinic for the elderly and with Happy People Helping People, “which gives elderly cardboard collectors free food.”
But, there is one part of her featured story that caught my attention. In her own words, Fiona said: -
“Growing up, I was angry with my dad, but now I no longer am.
Nursing changed the way I see life. You see many people in worse situations and you realise your problem is nothing compared with theirs.
A patient who is here today may be dead tomorrow. So why make myself unhappy over a person? I have seen a lot of death as a nurse, and the fragility of life.”
I have to pause here with the fragility of life. It is a compelling image of our brokenness, which some of us takes almost a lifetime to come to terms with. The affairs of our hearts do not keep track of this brokenness; most times, we do not admit to it.
Vulnerability is to be disavowed because to show it, confide with someone about it, is a sure sign of weakness. We rather go through life pretending our brokenness will just go away after we have attained our goals or achieved success others can only dream about. We therefore keep ourselves busy to keep our fragile soul in one piece.
But it doesn’t go away. The soul cannot be pieced together with worldly pursuits that are inclined towards fragmentation, not restoration or reconciliation.
What comes closest to healing a wounded heart or a broken soul is not a grip that cannot let go, that is, a grip that wants everything within its reach, or an ambition that takes possessive hold.
Any hope of healing has to come with an open hand and heart, one that experiences not a change in philosophy or ideology, but of perspective. As Fiona puts it, “A patient who is here today may be dead tomorrow. So why make myself unhappy over a person? I have seen a lot of death as a nurse.”
At only 32, that gift of perspective is the durable hallmark of maturity that I wish upon many people I know, including myself.
Here’s putting that perspective to work in Fiona’s own words.
“My dad died about nine years ago. We heard about it from a distant relative, and I felt sad.After he abandoned us, I still saw him once in a while and I last met him while I was at the polytechnic.
What helps me cope with difficulties in life is to keep telling myself that this will pass - that no matter how difficult it is now, the bad times will pass.”
Truly, the fragility of life unravels the futility of many things. Empowered by that perspective, and counselled by our brokenness, hate loses its hold, envy is easily let go, lust languishes at a distance, and selfish ambitions whither by like winter giving way to spring.
Many things will pass in our lifetime as we watch its season come, dwell and depart. This applies to a life as well as our feelings for or against someone. One day, we will experience our own mortality at its darkest hour. But what survives after that is the memories we leave behind.
Such memories, or legacy, either extend the darkness just before we heave our last breath or unveil the rising of light to our loved ones and friends. I guess this all depends on whether we go to our grave with hands fisted or hands open wide.
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