“Why would I be?”
“You know, I couldn’t go to bed that night after we talked… I was really sorry for upsetting you.”
“Grandpa Zhou, I just want you to know that you shouldn’t ever feel like everybody thinks you’re scum-of-the-earth okay?”
I didn’t realise it, but it’s been more than 2 years. More than 2 years since I met that angry, demanding, God-bashing, old man who’s been transformed into a kindly gentle grandfatherly figure in my life. On the outside, nothing much has changed. The coin box, the crumpled musky clothes, and the rusty harmonica still stay the same. But not a foul word comes from his mouth now. Grandpa Zhou gives thanks for everything, and once I sit down, he just can’t stop telling me story after story of the people he’s met at the church he now attends, and where he eats free meals 3 times a week from. His highlight of the week started out with just being the free meals themselves, and later on evolved into being the friends he made, the games they played and songs they sang before and after meals.
“Sing me a song, Grandpa Zhou.”
And off he would go. In Cantonese or Hokien dialect, with one hand holding the song lyrics and one hand gesticulating, he would sing with such flair and gusto in his sandy voice, hoarse from age, about the goodness of God in his life. There was always such a childlike energy in his notes, I could never stop laughing. We would talk. He would tell me about his week, about the new friends he had made and once he started singing, there’d be no end.
“Weijia (my mandarin name), I wanna show you this photo! Some secondary school kids came to visit us as volunteers and they took a photo of us! How nice! They gave me 2 photos, here’s one for you!”
Grandpa Zhou is the nearly bald man on the last row,
Seeing his health, temperament and outlook on life change with time has been amazing. After visiting his home that day, I learnt that Grandpa Zhou has the hoarding syndrome. From being insistent on keeping everything to himself 2 years ago and refusing to let go of even 1 item, he has now given me 2 trashbags worth of “treasures”, ‘for your kids in Nepal or that clinic you took me to or wherever’, he says.
trinkets
The toys he gave me really fascinated me- especially Mr. WWF!
had to resist keeping the stegosaurus dinosaur for myself!
Ah, my childhood passion for dinosaurs still lingers…
Getting him to clear his home filled from the floor to ceiling with rubbish is still an ongoing process.
Sometimes, I even find he has more faith in God than myself. He had medical bills to pay for his glaucoma and prostate problem (BPH), and the medical social worker couldn’t quite help him because compared to some single, homeless elderly people, he’s considered better off as he does have a home and children, no matter if they’ve cut off ties from him. I didn’t know how to tell him I was operating out of deficit. That night, I told him to pray. The sight of him crouching by the dirty steps of the train station, eyes closed and hands clasped in childlike trust melts even the hardest of hearts. I prayed aloud, “Dear God, please send us an angel to…” I sighed-what a stupid prayer, I’d end up being the one anyway, I thought, “… to please help Grandpa Zhou with his medical expenses.” Each consult can cost from thirty to seventy dollars, depending on his medication. By the time I left I was heavy-hearted.
True enough, God sent an angel, a stranger visiting this space to send money and love. David was a stranger, who has now become a friend. Grandpa Zhou was so amazed- “I always make sure I keep all my receipts so don’t you worry!” But I think I was more amazed, still.
Amazed at how Grandpa Zhou’s life has so radically changed and transformed into a new person within such a short span of time; amazed at how a simple encounter and a choice to simply Stop for One, against my own wishes, transformed not one, but two lives-his and mine; amazed at how at every point in my life, this nebulous, crazy, intangible and yet powerful force out there makes itself so real to me by interrupting my life, shaking me up and answering prayer, providing for needs time after time, over and over, faithfully, consistently, and so practically, miraculously.
I guess, if you look at things from my point of view, perhaps, it could only be God, no?
“Look at the birds of the air;
they do not sow or reap or store away in barns,
and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.
Are you not much more valuable than they?”
– Mathew 6:26
“Therefore, if anyone is in God, he is a new creation.
The old has passed away;
behold, the new has come.”
-2 Cor 5:17