CACCC’s 15th Anniversary Celebration: “A Year To Be Mindful”

Chin Huang Lan is a CACCC volunteer in Southern California.

Mrs. Lan is probably the oldest volunteer of CACCC, aged 88. Her motto and mantra is to be active and not to miss a single minute of her time. She is good at cooking, sewing, gardening, making friends, and doing charity work. She is very good at finding things to do, so everyone loved her.

In the face of death, Mrs. Lan had an open mind. She participated in memorial groups, she comforted her family by receiving them at farewell ceremonies, and she always told others to be prepared so that they could rest assured that they would not have to worry about anything.

During the pandemic, fear and anxiety consumed many people. During this period, she sewed nearly 2,000 pairs of masks for different organizations and distributed them to hospitals, tourists, schools, prisons, and other organizations in need, and she forgot the inconvenience of not being able to go out of the house from her work. She is very happy and proud to see that the finished products can help others. She also loves to learn, and uses her IPad to study for Cloud Dharma meetings and various religious courses.

Mrs. Lan has seven grandchildren, and she is happy to FaceTime with them. She is even more proud to be able to bring her children and grandchildren together to do volunteer work. She says her greatest wish is for world peace and no disasters!

Jane Yang is a CACCC volunteer in Southern California.

Mrs. Yang is one year younger than Mrs. Lan and is the mother of CACCC’s Director, Shirley Pan. Mrs. Yang often attended the activities organized by CACCC with Shirley and was the most loyal audience member, and all the other volunteers got to know Mrs. Yang as well.She also helped to publicize the concept of hospice, telling people that she has already filled out all the forms. At home, she would help organize used Heart-to-Heart Cards, arrange them in order, and put them in boxes. Mrs. Yang has mild Alzheimer’s disease and has poor short-term memory, but she is healthy, writes in her diary every day, and is happy every day.

When the COVID-19 pandemic started in March this year, there was a shortage of masks and CACCC decided to make cloth masks for the people in need. Mrs. Yang and Shirley collected cotton sheets and washed and ironed them. Every day after dinner, they spent 4 hours cutting the fabric and making mask straps, to the point where they had to wear masks themselves to avoid sneezing all the time. Mrs. Yang also inspected every mask other volunteers made and cut extra threads off before Shirley sterilized them and sent them to hospitals, nursing homes, the community, and volunteers. Mrs. Yang is an exemplary volunteer behind the scenes.

Kaiwen Zhang is a CACCC volunteer in Northern California.

At the age of 20, Kaiwen and her parents immigrated to the United States. With only a junior high school education, she could only find jobs as a kitchen worker. In order to improve her life, she worked hard and studied hard. From not knowing the 26 letters of the alphabet, she eventually earned her bachelor’s degree. Kaiwen says she was originally a selfish person who only wanted to make more money and couldn’t find a purpose in life. In 2015, when she wanted to learn more because of her job, she joined free classes offered by CACCC and became a volunteer. She really enjoyed what she learned at CACCC.

In 2017, she traveled between Alameda and Sacramento to complete CACCC’s 30 hour hospice and palliative care volunteer training, and later completed the Patient Ambassador Training, after which she traveled between Alameda and Mt. View every weekend to serve as a Patient Ambassador at El Camino Hospital. After becoming a volunteer. After becoming a volunteer, she met volunteers with different backgrounds, qualifications, and experiences, and saw her own shortcomings. When she visited the patients and talked with them, she felt that she had only done a little bit, but she gave them the warmth and the feeling of being cared for, and in turn found her own direction to strive for. When the coronavirus pandemic started, she was very worried that some cancer patients in the community did not have masks. When she learned that CACCC provided homemade cloth masks to those in need, she applied for masks from CACCC and delivered them to cancer patients in her community who did not have masks. A lot of people called CACCC to express their gratitude for Kaiwen’s help.

Kaiwen puts her “heart” into her volunteer work, and says that a little more care and a little more love will make her happier. She is thankful that her family is very supportive of her volunteer work and she hopes to help more people in the community.

Sumei Situ is a CACCC volunteer in New York.

When the coronavirus pandemic started in New York in March this year, Sue Mui responded to CACCC’s donation of PPEs by acting as the coordinator for the New York area, organizing volunteers to make cloth masks, and receiving supplies delivered to New York for distribution to organizations in need and CACCC volunteers. Thank you for her willingness to take on this important task when no one was willing to go out.

Sumei’s father passed away 11 years ago unexpectedly. The regret and sorrow lingering in her mind made her think hard about the meaning of life. Her father once said, “True love is giving without expecting anything in return”. These words inspired her to become a hospice and palliative care volunteer. The end of life is the most vulnerable or even confusing time in a person’s life, and we may not be able to take away someone’s pain for them, but we can make it bearable with warmth and understanding.

After completing a 30-hour hospice and palliative care volunteer training and receiving a certificate of completion from CACCC in New York in 2019, Sumei applied to be a visiting volunteer at Dawn Greene Hospice, a partner organization of Calvary Hospital. The patients she visits are not only Chinese; she is also able to communicate with American and Latino/a patients. Through companionship, sharing music, gossip, jokes, philosophy, literature, etc., she accompanies patients with different personalities, experiences, and backgrounds on their final journey and provides emotional support to their families. She is grateful to CACCC for providing her with very comprehensive and solid training, which made her feel confident from the first day of her volunteer work. She also said with emotion, “After becoming a visiting volunteer, I feel that every experience in our life is not in vain, because each can be an opportunity to open up a path of communication with others.” One of her most memorable patients was a civil engineering expert and company owner who was diagnosed with an incurable disease at the peak of his career. This man was angry about everything, and was known throughout the organization as a very critical and unfriendly patient. The first time Sumei visited him, she sensed his arrogance as soon as she walked in the door. But she tried her best to ascertain his personality and preferences in a short conversation. After a while, she discovered common topics: she spent time in the city where he grew up, he was also interested in social issues such as the affordability of higher education, and he was a fan of classical music. Even better: when the conversation turned to AutoCAD design software, his eyes lit up as he recounted how, when the first version of the software was first released, he sat day and night in front of a shaky old-school screen, trying to figure out how to use it all by himself. After the first visit, he began eagerly awaiting her weekly visits. One time, she introduced him to a modern work by an Italian poet and singer, and even though he didn’t understand Italian, he burst into tears and even said he loved it. When Sumei visited him for the last time, he was already in his last days. She sat by his bedside and played the Italian song he loved for him. In the middle of the singing, which was as clear and warm as the early spring sun, a line of tears fell silently from his grayish-yellow face…

During her time as a volunteer, Soo Mui has inevitably had to say goodbye time and time again to terminal patients who had become her friends. She understands that death is inevitable, so she is not overly sad, but is comforted by the fact that she has been there for them on their last journey. Volunteering with hospice has taught her to be more tenderhearted and to live in love. She is looking forward to visiting patients again when lockdown is lifted.