A friend related to me recently a story of a woman who had passed on at a local hospital.
The woman was alone and had suffered from cancer for a number of years. She has only one child, but he lives in Australia.
The woman had been on comfort care for quite a while in the hospital and was being pumped with morphine until just hours before her demise. My friend told me how it seemed like this woman just could not wait any longer, as her time was up.
For the past eight to 10 months, while this woman slowly rot away, she had waited and hoped to see her only child but he never came. Whenever she had called him, her son replied "I am too busy to chat, call me later", or "It's not convenient".
And it only gets worse. On the day his mother passed away, when he received the call telling him that his mother was no more, he gave the ultimate answer to the caller, who was a family friend, "Can you go sort it out. I am restructuring my firm. I can't come. Just send me the bill."
The lonely woman, with all her money, dies alone. And this ungrateful son will get a huge inheritance eventually.
Maybe karma will come back to bite him one day.
People are so lost trying to get money and power that basic human connections seem extinct now.
I watch a family in a restaurant, no one talks. All eyes on a gadget. When friends gather too, eyes are on their gadgets even while eating.
I watch elderly people being treated like nuisance by their own flesh and blood, and I hear stories of mistreatment.
This is the world we live in now. This is the world of soulless people. This is the world where conscience seems to no longer exist.
What have we become. What have we allowed the world to evolve to.
I really think the world needs to stop and reboot. People have to remember who they are and why they exist and how they got there.
It is all because of their parents that they were brought into the world. They were nurtured by their parents blood and sweat.
The education they received that has enabled them to acquire the material wealth they possess is all thanks to the efforts of their parents.
Without their parents, nothing they have today will exist. They will not be where they are. They would not even exist if their parents had not given them life. – March 14, 2016.
* Charles Vincent reads The Malaysian Insider.
* This is the personal opinion of the writer, organisation or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.
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