My PohPoh (a.k.a. grandma)

About once a month, my 84-year-old grandma asks me if I want to go with her to lunch.

But I know what she's doing. She does it every month, always around the same time.

Nevermind the fact that I go to her house every week to have lunch or dinner. I know that when she asks me to go on a specific day to meet her at noon at Sky Dragon, on the top floor of the Dragon City Centre right on Spadina and Dundas Streets, it's not just going to be me and her.

She's a member of Carefirst, a community network for seniors in the GTA. More prominent in the Chinese community, Carefirst is a member of the United Way. Along with providing services such as meals-on-wheels, transportation to grocery shopping and doctors appointments, there are also volunteer visits, housing services and social outings.

Once a month, the branch my grandma belongs to has a Chinese banquet-style lunch at Sky Dragon to celebrate the people who have birthdays throughout the month. It costs $15 for a member, $17 for a non-member. But it comes complete with a starter soup, four or five courses, dessert and birthday cake.

The members love it. There are always at least five or six full tables of laughing, smiling, happy faces. You can tell right away how many of them have their hair dyed for the occasion. They get to see friends, tell jokes, and sing karaoke-- mostly Chinese opera.

I love it, too. I love interacting with them, and hearing them tell their stories. The biggest laugh during lunch was their amazement of the sixtuplets born in B.C. One of my grandma's friends holds up her teacup saying in Chinese "Imagine having a baby as big as this! No wonder she could fit six in there!"

Then another friend announces to the table that my grandma has nine children, all girls except for one. And then the conversation turns to oohs and aahs and how lucky she was to have had at least one son. But then the conversations turns to me, and they all say how I'm such a "gwai lui"-- obedient girl -- for coming here with my grandma. No other grandchildren ever show up. Even the volunteers who organize these lunches and the wait staff at the restaurant know who I am, and they too always say something like "Gum gwai lui, sang yut lay pue laygou PohPoh." Excuse my horrible version of Chinese phonetics, but that means "Such an obedient girl, always coming to keep her grandma company."

It makes me proud that I can be a part of that. And it makes me wonder what other services are out there for seniors like Carefirst.

My boyfriend's grandfather, who became a widower four years ago tomorrow, has not been the same since his wife's death. My boyfriend's mom, his daughter, is convinced that if only he had some companionship he wouldn't be in such bad shape. Limited physically, he can't take up his hobby of carpentry. He just needs someone to talk to.

It's not hard to find a support line-- 211Toronto.ca has a directory of more than 200,000 networks, United Way of Canada has 125 member United Ways.

The hard part is to convince someone to use those services-- that they need those services. My grandma will go to the lunch or dinner banquets or the singing outings, and yes she has made many friends, but she refuses to have someone drop off her groceries; she insists she can still do all her own cooking, cleaning, housework, and errands.

And she can. She's been doing for it for 15 years now. And she's made me realize that even at age 84, she's still so independent, contrast to multiple requests from aunts in Hong Kong to hire a cook, a grocery shopper and a maid to clean her 400 sq. ft. apartment on Bleeker Street.

I've gotten her to wear a MedicAlert bracelet, but that's as far as she's let me push her. When I'm in Chinatown I call her to ask if she needs groceries, she has not once said she needed anything. When I notice that a light bulb needs replacing, I make the mistake of mentioning it, and the next week when I come with a new light bulb I find that she's already replaced it herself.

She knows how to get around the city. She can go all the way to Square One on her own. She can make it to my dad's house at Bayview and Major Mac., and she's even gone to my mom's grave in Stouffville without anyone's help.

I guess the point is that she knows that if she needs help, she knows how to get it. And I will always be, at the very least, one phone call away. And in coming years, if her health is not what it is today, I know that there are support services out there that can help. Whether she needs a bag of rice, a light bulb, or someone to talk to, I know there are good people who volunteer their time to help people like my grandma.