The emotions are still fresh for caregiver Christine Fadriga, 59, whose client of six years died at the age of 97 on Tuesday, Feb. 11.
“She’s a very strong woman, very kind, very loving, jokes a lot,” Fadriga tells PEOPLE about Bette Rosen, whom she lived with and tended to at her Laguna Niguel home five days a week, during 24-hour shifts. “I miss her jokes. I miss her [voice].”
“It’s sad and it’s hard to let go of someone special,” she adds.
Fadriga tells PEOPLE that before coming to the United States, she ran a “successful” flower shop in Cebu City and was the major supplier of imported flowers from around the world. However, through the “ups and downs” of life, she and her husband of over 20 years eventually separated and the shop closed.
“I told myself before the boat will sink and I’ll drag everybody down, might as well I’ll jump ship and do something,” she says.
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Making the decision to leave her children was “very difficult,” she admits. Yet she doesn’t “have any regrets" about coming to America in order to provide a better future for them.
From left: Bette Rosen and Christine Fadriga.courtesy Christine Fadriga
courtesy Christine Fadriga
By 2006, after taking a six month course in caregiving, Fadriga arrived in Arizona and then two years later moved to California, working as a caregiver for several clients with a range of ailments and illnesses.
Fadriga says that through her work, she’s realized there is a connection between her passion for flowers and caregiving.
“I can feel the plants if it needs to be watered, if it needs to be fertilized, if it needs to be trimmed, I can feel them,” she adds.
Christine Fadriga.courtesy Christine Fadriga
Today, her children “are all grown up” and live in California, Canada and the Philippines.“I’m just happy that they’re all capable people,” the grandmother says.
“It’s a calling for me to take care of the sick and the dying and the needy,” she says. “It was an experience that I love, it’s in my heart, it’s ingrained.”
source: people.com
