Mahmud's Story

“Kopi O? Kosong la!” Mahmud chuckles as he prepares breakfast for his 74-year-old mother at 5:30am — soft-boiled eggs, toast, and her usual sugarless coffee. Both mother and son have dwarfism, high blood pressure, and diabetes. But Mahmud admits his own health is worse — he’s always put her needs before his.

At 52, Mahmud has been his mother’s full-time caregiver since 2019. It began after a taxi knocked her down, breaking her leg. “I had to quit my job to look after her,” he says. Before caregiving, Mahmud worked steadily — starting as a cleaner at 15, then spending 20 years as an office attendant at NUS, and later joining Tan Tock Seng Hospital as support staff.

Two years into caregiving, during the COVID-19 period, doctors diagnosed his mother with dementia. Once a tireless factory worker who rose at 4am for shifts and later cleaned HDB blocks, she began talking to the sky and walls, forgetting things, and fainting easily. “She can’t stand too long,” Mahmud explains. “And she doesn’t like daycare — a friend there bullied her.”

Now, caregiving is a round-the-clock job. “No time for myself,” he admits. Old friendships have faded. “If I’m not around, she calls the police, saying ‘Mahmud missing!’” At night, she often cleans the house while he lies awake. “I feel like a zombie,” he says.

They live together in a rental flat in Woodlands and go everywhere as a pair — even to Mindfull Community’s Caregivers-to-Caregivers (C2C) Education Programmes. There, Mahmud learns about dementia and its symptoms — all new to him. The programme has become a lifeline. “I’m all alone otherwise,” he says. Though relatives live nearby, they rarely visit.

Mahmud has a younger brother, but they’re not close. The brother harbours resentment toward their mother for giving him away to her older brother as a baby. “He tells me, ‘Go work, don’t care,’” Mahmud shares. Their father, who passed away when Mahmud was in his early 20s, was abusive. In some ways, Mahmud feels his brother was the lucky one.

Still, Mahmud finds joy in the simple things. He’s learned to manage his mother’s condition better through the classes. He dotes on his three cats and takes his mother out for “jalan jalan” [walks] every day.