Pastor Ken
After our recent move, to make sure all the fragile items are intact, I spent time going over my collectibles and came across a six-inch tall small vase, a gift from my piano teacher.
A few years ago, I went back to Hong Kong and visited her at her place. In her eighties, she’d been retired for years and was sorting out her things in preparation for her move to a senior home. She picked up a vase and asked casually, “Is this beautiful?” After I said “Yes,” She gave it to me. “You can have it. I don’t need it, anyway. Someone gave it to me a while ago. A sought-after thin porcelain made in Jingdezhen, Guangxi.”
Since then, this small vase has been with me for almost thirty years.
Many collectors love thin porcelain, also known as eggshell porcelain, and describe it as “thin like a cicada’s wing, translucent like glass, and as light as a floating cloud.” My teacher gave it to me not because I was her outstanding student (to be honest, I was a lazy one), but because she knew her future home at the senior center comprised only a bed, a wardrobe, and a nightstand. Her years of collections and belongings wouldn’t fit. Instead of throwing them away, she would rather give them to someone she knew.
My teacher didn’t tell me much about her past, but I learned from others that she came from a well-to-do family, studied in the US, and graduated from Juilliard School. She was once married. Sadly, her husband passed away during the Sino-Japan war. When I started piano lessons with her as a high schooler, she’d been living by herself for years. Judging from her generous donations to various Christian organizations, I think she definitely could afford to live in a nice place of her own in her later years. Yet, she chose to move to a senior home.
Senior housing usually gives the impression of a place where people enter and never leave till death. Those who move in must be prepared that once they cannot take care of themselves anymore, they’ll be moved to the assisted living wing until they pass. It’s quite depressing to learn that your roommate or housemate may be here one day but gone the next.
Yet my teacher gave me a different perspective on the senior home. When she was still capable, she spent time with others around her and participated in a variety of activities. If relatives and friends came to visit or took her out for dinner, she simply signed out and didn’t need to worry about anything. Staff members took care of her needs. So she didn’t have to bother her relatives. To her, it was a form of independence. Talking about sickness and even death, it’ll happen no matter where we live. In fact, if it happens in the senior home, someone will know right away and take you to the hospital. It made perfect sense for her to move there.
When we are young, we enjoy collecting different things and display them around the house to show off. It’s a way to convey our good taste and appreciation of art and beauty. If we own photos of celebrities and us together, they can even bring us lots of praises. By the time we move into senior housing, all these are a thing of the past. Precious moments bury deep in our hearts. Even if we still own expensive items, there are no occasions to show them. Indeed, we need little.
I really admire my teacher’s wisdom. She knew how to accept her situation and chose to spend the last stretch of her life in a senior home with joy. When she passed away at over a hundred years old, she still had a clear mind. Truly an amazing individual!
