This pandemic has taken away so many lives, left so many families shattered one such family is that of Dar-ul-Sukun - a centre for underprivileged persons with disabilities. They lost their incharge, a woman who had dedicated her entire life looking after them.
Sister Ruth Lewis died from COVID-19 at a hospital in Karachi. She was 77. The Catholic nun was on a ventilator at the Agha Khan Hospital after contracting the virus on July 8.
Twenty-one children of Dar-ul-Sukun have been infected with the novel coronavirus and have been put under quarantine. Sister Ruth continued to serve them until she tested positive and was taken to hospital a day later, where she was moved onto a ventilator, according to officials.
Let’s go back a few years and see how Sister Ruth lived her life…
On February 17, 1969, Sister Ruth, Sister Gertrude Lemmens and Sister Margaret D’Costa joined the Karachi home for around 150 physically and mentally challenged people, mostly children and teenagers, founded by the sisters of the Franciscan Missionaries of Christ the King, said the statement posted on Facebook by Dar-ul-Sukun.
“Since then there was no turning back. She took care of such children all her life. The children whom their own families abandoned, children who were called monsters because of deformities and chronic disability, children whose sight could traumatise a layman, children whom people visited to cherish their fully functional body and brain. But Sister Ruth became their mother. They were not ‘objects of misery and charity’ to her but her own children, each unique. She worked tirelessly to make their personality. In such a world where people hire maids and nannies to clean the mess of their own children, she wiped their bums and noses with bare hands.”
People like her are rare, they dedicate their entire lives for serving people. She served, took care of children whose families had abandoned them. In the selfish world of today, people like her are hard to find. May she rest in peace.
