Cherisse Moe

Sev­en­ty-two year-old Elvi­ra Pierre is liv­ing proof that age is in­deed just a num­ber. Sit­ting in a wheel­chair in the gallery of the "Our La­dy of Lour­des Home for the Aged" in Wood­brook, she sings along to a pop­u­lar Christ­mas parang be­ing played on the air­waves. Throw­ing her hands in the air, she shows off her dance moves. With red ear­rings and nail pol­ish to match, she is as spright­ly and as charm­ing as they come. In fact, you hard­ly no­tice that she has on­ly one leg, hav­ing lost the oth­er due to poor cir­cu­la­tion. She quick­ly makes it clear, though, that de­spite her hand­i­cap, she is quite ca­pa­ble of car­ry­ing out her dai­ly tasks. "I like to knock about from here to there, you know. I do every­thing by my­self. I bathe my­self and go to the bath­room...I am Span­ish, so of course I love to dance, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing this time of the year! Fe­liz Navi­dad!" Then there's Mona Browne, who at 86, is the old­est per­son at the home.

She was said to be a very good hair­dress­er in her day. And al­though Hugh Ox­ley, 80, suf­fers from Alzheimer's dis­ease, he nod­ded in agree­ment when I found out that he is a for­mer tech­ni­cal op­er­a­tor at Ra­dio Trinidad. He is se­vere­ly weak­ened by a stroke which he suf­fered about five years ago, but he loves to dance and lis­ten to mu­sic. The spir­it of Christ­mas was alive and well when the T&T Guardian vis­it­ed the home re­cent­ly. Even though it was morn­ing time, the Christ­mas tree was well-dec­o­rat­ed and lit, and Christ­mas stock­ings were hung on the walls. The es­tab­lish­ment, which is home to sev­en se­nior cit­i­zens, is run by San­dra Rat­tans­ingh. The chem­istry shared be­tween Rat­tans­ingh, her pa­tients, and geri­atric nurs­es Veron­i­ca Bernard and Charmine Tape was ev­i­dent.

Lit­tle mo­ments count

Rat­tans­ingh said she opened the home sev­en years ago to help the el­der­ly lead more ful­fill­ing lives, as they had all, in some way or the oth­er, con­tributed to the so­ci­ety. The home, she said, pro­vid­ed se­nior cit­i­zens with some ten­der lov­ing care and a safe haven for them to be them­selves. Stat­ing that it was a bless­ing to be around her pa­tients, who she de­scribed as her "lit­tle fam­i­ly," the for­mer Re­pub­lic Bank em­ploy­ee stat­ed, "I al­ways liked deal­ing with peo­ple, es­pe­cial­ly with kids and the el­der­ly. You­can learn so much from them. We are like a lit­tle fam­i­ly here." And while her dis­po­si­tion to­wards the el­der­ly is wel­com­ing, Rat­tans­ingh, who al­so does char­i­ta­ble work with the St Vin­cent de Paul or­gan­i­sa­tion, said far too of­ten, the aged were un­der-ap­pre­ci­at­ed and over­looked. She ar­tic­u­lat­ed that there need­ed to be bet­ter struc­tures in place in T&T to ef­fec­tive­ly care for se­nior cit­i­zens. "In the US and oth­er coun­tries, they ac­tu­al­ly cater for their el­der­ly cit­i­zens. We must do the same. A lot of them have con­tributed to T&T. Some fam­i­ly mem­bers don't even have time to spend with them. Just hav­ing these lit­tle mo­ments with them counts."

Dif­fer­ent kind of fam­i­ly

Rat­tans­ingh lament­ed that get­ting qual­i­fied staff was yet an­oth­er chal­lenge fac­ing old-aged homes in T&T, as many per­sons ap­plied for the jobs for all the wrong rea­sons. "There are few peo­ple now who do it now for the love. And a lot of them need train­ing. They need to reach out to the el­der­ly, know how to treat them. But a lot of them are in it sim­ply for the in­come," she said. "I look at them as my par­ents not as pa­tients." Rat­tans­ingh said two of her pa­tients left the home to spend Christ­mas with their fam­i­lies. The oth­er five spent the day with a dif­fer­ent kind of fam­i­ly- but fam­i­ly all the same.

Ku­dos to Tru Valu Ku­dos go out to the man­age­ment of the Di­a­mond Vale branch of Tru Valu Su­per­mar­ket, who will­ing­ly agreed to spread some Christ­mas cheer by do­nat­ing a food ham­per to the Our La­dy of Lour­des Home for the Aged. The se­nior cit­i­zens were treat­ed to sug­ar-free jam, marsh­mal­lows, milk, cof­fee, gin­ger tea, crix and oth­er good­ies.