Union workers gathered to celebrate Domestic Workers Day 2017 in Hong Kong. IDWF/Flickr. (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
When Po Po passed away last year, I was sad. I had been taking care of her for six years. We lived together, ate together, and went to sleep together. Whenever she felt pain, I immediately felt it as well. Po Po often screamed and moaned all night, making it difficult for me to fall asleep. I was unable to compensate for these hours of lost sleep during the day. She couldn’t walk and I needed to lift her up to help her use the toilet.
I took care of Po Po as if she was family. While working for my second employer in Hong Kong, I realised that in order to properly care for someone, I needed to imagine that I was caring for my own parents and treat them from the heart. At the time, I was taking care of an elderly man and felt embarrassed when he needed me to bathe him. As soon as I started treating him as though he was my own father, the embarrassment went away. Care work required us to work with love.
