Con­tem­po­rary T&T has be­come a very bru­tal and un­car­ing place where peo­ple look out for them­selves with lit­tle con­cern for oth­ers. Pur­chas­ing a tick­et there­fore at $500 to at­tend a char­i­ty af­fair, out of which I ex­pect­ed to gain lit­tle, af­ter all at such events the at­ten­dees are usu­al­ly of the mid­dle and up­per mid­dle class­es, per­haps bored with their ex­is­tence and some­what re­strict­ed in their so­cial life. Me not be­ing of ei­ther of the class­es more­over not of the cock­tail par­ty crowd dressed in ex­pen­sive fin­ery (I have none) and en­gaged in friv­o­lous chat­ter, I on­ly did so be­cause my bright and beau­ti­ful daugh­ter was in­volved; I there­fore had to suck in my prej­u­dices.  

On en­try, my ini­tial in­ter­pre­ta­tion of what it would turn out to be seemed quite jus­ti­fied– women well decked-off with won­der­ful­ly ex­ot­ic scents were every­where. On turn­ing in my tick­et at the en­try to Mille Fleurs, the love­ly young la­dy greet­ed me so warm­ly that it put me off mo­men­tar­i­ly. See­ing my con­fu­sion, she said her name, kissed me on the cheek and I re­alised it was one of my daugh­ter’s dear friends. I there­fore re­laxed; af­ter all, if my daugh­ter and one of her friends could be so in­volved in this tralala, I rea­soned it could not be so bad af­ter all.

I had dropped off my wife and her sis­ters at the front gate and parked else­where. On re­turn, I be­gan my search for them amongst the hoi pol­loi. I found the trio com­fort­ably nes­tled in seats, ob­vi­ous­ly en­joy­ing the at­mos­phere; maybe a cyn­ic read­ing this would say: “So you, hav­ing mar­ried in­to the so­cial class, with a daugh­ter com­fort­ably en­sconced amongst them, maybe you, notwith­stand­ing protes­ta­tions to the con­trary, had be­come one of them.”  “Not at all Ras­ta!”

Any­how, my fears were as­suaged some­what when my son en­tered the frame dressed in youth-man stylings of the grass­roots. All of this is pre­lim­i­nary which I have used as an in­tro­duc­tion for the pur­pose of say­ing that there are young peo­ple in­clu­sive of a so­cial and pro­fes­sion­al class with a true Tri­ni eth­nic­i­ty who care and are will­ing to do some­thing about their con­cern for hu­man­i­ty.  

As the func­tion un­fold­ed (in­ci­den­tal­ly I was in­clined to leave be­fore what I thought would be the so­cial chat­ter in­ter­lude–pity me at­tempt­ing to per­suade my wife and her sis­ters to leave and then hav­ing to face my daugh­ter af­ter­wards) the true na­ture of it came crash­ing in­to my brain and dent­ed many of my pre­con­ceived and off-course no­tions.

LivLife Char­i­ty Foun­da­tion, the host of the event, was formed and dri­ven by a group of young doc­tors who spe­cialise in giv­ing pal­lia­tive care to oth­er hu­man be­ings to make their last days on earth as com­fort­able and dig­ni­fied as they pos­si­bly can.

LivLife pro­vides med­ical and hu­man care for such peo­ple with­out cost not on­ly at old peo­ple’s res­i­dences, where in some in­stances they are left to die shorn of the dig­ni­ty they earned in their lives, but al­so at their homes where they can spend their last days in a place in which they in­vest­ed their blood, sweat, tears and love to es­tab­lish a fam­i­ly.

One such sto­ry came in the in­ter­ac­tive seg­ment of the func­tion from a young la­dy from “Laven­ty”—that place where all kinds ah peo­ple does fraid to go these days and where the young peo­ple are sup­posed to have lost their true selves. The al­most girl-like fig­ure demon­strat­ed her ca­pac­i­ty be­yond what the eye could be­hold by telling of the lived-love car­ing she ex­tend­ed to her ail­ing fa­ther. Re­sult­ing from that ex­pe­ri­ence she has now joined the char­i­ty group and is de­vot­ing her en­er­gy and time to en­sur­ing that oth­ers such as her fa­ther “die with their dig­ni­ty” in­tact.

Speak­er af­ter speak­er came to the mi­cro­phone to re­late sto­ries of rel­a­tives and pa­tients who had and are ben­e­fit­ing from the ser­vices of LivLife, many of whom were with­out the ca­pac­i­ty to pay for such ser­vices. But through the Char­i­ty Foun­da­tion, they were able to tran­si­tion out of this world and in­to an­oth­er, one hope­ful­ly more lov­ing and car­ing than this one, with their phys­i­cal pain eased and psy­cho­log­i­cal trau­ma made bear­able.

Then there was the oth­er part of the event. Peo­ple there from the “hoi pol­loi”—what an un­kind way to de­scribe peo­ple—were pledg­ing sums of hard-to-come-by dol­lars to meet the costs of con­tin­u­ing care for those leav­ing this world. I had to swal­low hard on my ini­tial type-cast­ing of these car­ing and gen­er­ous peo­ple ex­er­cis­ing the long-time Tri­ni gen­eros­i­ty. Apolo­gies!

All is not lost! There are young pro­fes­sion­als and in­sti­tu­tions who/which care; the hu­man­i­ty in them has been pre­served, they have left be­hind the “I am okay, Jack” feel­ing; they are aware that notwith­stand­ing the im­me­di­ate, they have ben­e­fit­ed from the best this dis­tort­ed and con­fused so­ci­ety has to of­fer and they are now giv­ing back. Bless­ings.