For anyone who have seen some of my posts regarding our very own Assistant Secretary of DSWD Dra. Lorraine T. Badoy, this is a copy of her post today in her Facebook account, July 12, 2017 of Graces Home for the Elderly.
This she wrote:
These are people who have been dealt the heaviest blows in life: being abandoned by their nearest and dearest and by the very people they gave their lives to.
I think it a sacred duty and a privilege to listen to the impossibly sad stories of their lives and then to help them bear these heavy beams as much as I can.
And I bear this burden with as much strength and grace as I can because I do know, that over and beyond the reconstructing of our beat up centers, my job is to heal and to comfort. And to defend and to protect. And to give dignity where dignity has, long ago, been denied them.
So I go to GRACES regularly.
I see it so clearly--how they have no one but us now.
So there is a line I tell them when the grief of what has happened to them overtakes them. And when I say this line, it is as if I am able to touch their saddest, loneliest center and make some connection, however brief.
And I am able to do what I think is impossible if I were in their shoes—and that is to give them some measure of comfort and connection.
“Iniwanan ako ng anak ko dito.”
Me: “Ilang taon na ho ‘tay?”
“Bago lang. One month pa lang. Sabi nya babalikan nya ako.”
So I ask the social worker how long our lolo has been waiting and she says, “Five years.”
Him: “Miss na miss ko na nga sila eh.” Then he cries. And he apologizes bec the tears have now become profuse and he is unable to stop so he sobs uncontrollably. “Pasensha ka na dra. Hindi ko alam bat ako naging iyakin pagtapos ng stroke.”
I am grateful to have reached this stage in my life where I can bear people crying on my shoulder in silence, with no need to make the pain go away because I understand how pain this huge can just persist.
I hold his hand and tell him my line. I say, “’Tay pwede ba, kami na lang muna ang pamilya mo? Ok lang ho ba?”
And he grips my hand. Tight. And sobs like a child. “Pwedeng pwede. Pwedeng pwede. Salamat. Salamat.”
But it’s not just a line to me, see. They are my family.
This, too, is where I go in my own season of betrayals.
I think it was the Dalai Lama who said, “Compassion occurs only among equals.”
And their place of woundedness –where their deepest wounds are the ones dealt them by family and friends—is the very same place of woundedness I have. This is our common sacred ground. And the truth is, when I go there, their wounds are where I hide and find my deepest comfort in.
Disclaimer: This is her story. PEACE, LOVE, FREE.
https://www.facebook.com/lorraine.badoy
