Lingering Hope
By Sherry Lee
Originally published in the South China Morning News, July 26, 2001
Time is running out for Po Wai-han. Doctors have given the young single mother just months to live. She has undergone four operations to treat her cancer, but she is also enduring a greater pain than the agony of imminent death.
Po, 25, is still searching for a family who can adopt her five-year-old daughter, Wing-yu. Local newspapers highlighted her case recently but nobody has come forward to adopt her little girl, who has Down's syndrome.
Po's condition has deteriorated further and all she lives for now is to settle her daughter with adoptive parents. Then, she can die in peace. She doesn't know when the end will come. She has never asked the doctors specifically, in case they tell her.
"I am worried that if I die, no one will take care of her," Po says sadly. She can hand Wing-yu to the Social Welfare Department (SWD) but she is afraid the officials will take her little girl away; that she won't know where the child is for the brief remainder of her life.
Like many children with Down's syndrome, Wing-yu, whom her mother calls "Yu Yu", has learning and speech difficulties, but despite her disability, she looks no different from other children. Wing-yu, who always seems to be laughing and loves playing, is only slightly affected by the condition, according to the Hong Kong Down Syndrome Association, which is helping Po's appeal for adoptive parents.
"Wing-yu is no different from normal kids, it is only that she needs more time to understand things, and you have to repeat things when you teach her; apart from that, she is very clever and she understands," says Sandra Ng Fung-chi, who is in charge of the association's integrated parent-support services.
Po says Wing-yu can dress and feed herself, help to make dinner and carry her own bag to kindergarten. She's looking for a couple of any race with lots of love and patience for her daughter.
The SWD, which places children for adoption, has reservations about Po's ability to find new parents by herself and urges the single mother to involve its staff in her search, even if prospective parents are found in time. "It is rare that a woman would plead for adoption for her child on her own," a department spokeswoman says. "We hope we can help her, she has no access to adoptive families on her own, how can she find one?"
Thomas Mulvey, the executive director of the Hong Kong Family Welfare Society, agrees. "She does not have the knowledge to do an assessment, or have access to a wide range of people who may be suitable," Mulvey says.
Even with the department's help, the search for a family for Wing-yu would still be a struggle. The department says 112 special-needs children who have been rejected by local families are still waiting—some as long as three years—for adoption overseas. Many of these children have Down's syndrome or disabilities.
Social workers say children over the age of three and those with Down's syndrome are harder to place. "People think children with Down's syndrome may not be able to care for themselves even after they grow up, and that they have to care for the child all of their lives, so it is difficult for them to find adoptive parents," says Vivian Ip, an overseas-adoption social worker with the Mother's Choice care organisation, which helps the department find adoptive parents overseas.
Some of the children await new homes in foster care, small group homes, Mother's Choice child care centres or in orphanages, places which Po is desperate that Wing-yu avoid.
Po is not alone in her quest—52 private adoptions were granted in Hong Kong in 2000/01—but her lone plea in the media is unusual and the SWD is against the young mother's decision to go it alone. "We won't support her move. How can she assess if the person is suitable? We have a system to assess adoptive parents, we don't encourage her to do it by herself," says the head of the department's adoption unit, Alice Choi Chau Pui-yau.
Po feels she has few choices and no one to turn to. She says her parents and Wing-yu's father are unable to help.
Po has had a difficult life. When her parents split up, her brother lived with her mother, she stayed with her father. Both parents remarried; she was sent to a boarding school in remote Tiu Keng Leng, where her cheerful personality won her many friends. But she was pulled out in Form Four, when her father's money ran out. Po had to work first as a salesgirl, and then, when she was 15, in a boutique, where she fell in love with a colleague.
Five years later she became pregnant. She refused to have an abortion. "I could not do that," she says. Po says she and Wing-yu's father split up when their daughter was born. Wing-yu has never seen her father.
At first Po thought of giving up her child. But now Wing-yu, whose name means "singing joyfulness", has become her "most precious treasure."
However, in 1998, Po was diagnosed with cancer. "I was shocked, I thought, who is going to take care of her?" she says, adding that she has tried every method to save herself, from taking Chinese herbal medicine to practising qi gong, but all to no avail. Although ill and frail, Po took Wing-yu on a bicycle to and from school in nearby Tai Wai, and cooked for her until early March. Since then the young mother has been too ill and no longer has even the strength to hold Wing-yu, whom she has had to place with a foster family in a nearby flat.
"I didn't tell Wing-yu that I was sick, I was afraid she would be scared, I told her, 'Mum is lazy and does not want to cook, it is better to live in an auntie's house'," she says. Po lives alone in a public-housing flat in Sha Tin and Wing-yu comes home once a week. Po's struggle with her illness is unrelenting; she cries when the pain gets too much. She wears a drip attached to her arm to help relieve the torment. Previously she weighed more than 54kg, but is now wasted to 36kg and her cheeks are sunken as the bladder cancer spreads throughout her body.
Wing-yu is now aware her mother is seriously ill, but she doesn't know she will die soon. "I don't want to tell her that I will die, she is too young to understand it," Po says.
The pair's separation is painful. Po misses her daughter and wonders what she is doing. She calls her every day, anxious to keep in contact for as long as she can. Wing-yu expresses her grief through songs. One night at the foster home, her voice suddenly changed as she sang, says her foster mother, Mrs Cheng. "I went over to her bed and saw her sobbing. I asked her, 'Why are you crying? You miss Mum?', and she said, 'Yes'."
Recently, Wing-yu has taken to "talking" to her mother on her toy telephone. When they are together, every time Po tells her to go outside or asks her to put on her shoes, she cries, afraid she has to leave.
Wing-yu is home today. Sitting quietly in the living room, she is learning to write on a copy book. With a fringe and tiny glasses, her face is shaped like a smooth apple.
Unlike other children who always want their mothers to hold them, Wing-yu knows her mum's arms ache and never asks to be held, and when she sees her mother is hurting, she will ask: "Pain?"
Wing-yu has also learnt to take care of her mother. "As my arm aches, she will rub medicinal oil for me, and when I cough, she will soothe my back. I am so moved," Po says.
As the camera flashes at her, Wing-yu keeps asking the photographer to take pictures not only of her, but also "Mum." She seems to understand her mother's plea for a new parent - she even tries to show herself to the best advantage. She washes her hands and face without being asked and goes out of her way to be obliging.
Asked if she wants a new parent, Wing-yu hides in the wardrobe and retorts: "No way" (an English phrase she learnt from her mum). Then she whispers, nodding her head: "Mum is sick, Mum takes medicines."
As doctors' bills have used up all of Po's savings, she now relies on a monthly $3,000 social security handout. She also has to borrow from friends every month.
Unable to care for herself, Po applied for care service from the Social Welfare Department, but was rejected.
Her story has moved many people, however. Recently a parish worker, Cindy Yang Yin-ping, 50, whom the young mother met in the nearby Catholic church, offered to make her meals and brew Chinese medicines. Now Yang visits Po twice a day. "She has reached out a hand for help, so I give my help," she says.
Yang's visits are a rare tonic for Po, however. Wing-yu's foster mother, Cheng, who is in her late 40s and has two grown-up children, says she can't adopt the child.
"If I adopt her, I must give her a good life, but my life is not so good and I can't give her much, I hope she can find an educated and rich family to give her a better life," she says, calling Wing-yu "a happy and kind child" who "likes to help other children."
It is 9pm—time for Wing-yu to go. Not wanting to leave, the child puts on her pyjamas, hinting that she wants to sleep in her mother's house. But reluctantly she has to follow Cheng to the door and wave her mummy goodbye.
Po's 26th birthday is next month. If she lives to her big day, her wish is simple. "I wish my illness will disappear, I will survive and can be together with Yu Yu and see her grow up," she says, smiling.
Anyone who feels they can help, please call the Hong Kong Down's Syndrome Association at 2718 7775.
