Did Lorna Tolentino die in vain?(In our Nov. 30 issue, we reported on Lorna Tolentino who arrived in Canada on June 2008 to work as a caregiver under Canada’s Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP). In October last year she was diagnosed with terminal cancer and admitted to the Burnaby Hospital.) She died on New Year’s Day at 1:30 in the afternoon, alone in her bed at the St. Michael’s Hospice where she was transferred several weeks ago from the Burnaby Hospital. No one in her family was with her – they were thousands of miles away in the Philippines.
My wife and I visited her two days before she died – our third since we learned of her hospitalization through the Migrant Workers’ Ministry of St. Mary’s Catholic Church on Joyce St. Unlike our previous visits, she was no longer able to talk nor respond to us. When I clasped her hand, there was no more life in her and I could sense she was nearing death.