As a teenager, I couldn’t stand seeing a photo of my nose in profile. I hated how big it was and, if people praised me for my looks, I always felt it was in spite of the most noticeable feature on my face.

I was about to accept that I would never fully see my nose as beautiful when I met Nicholas Baldion, an artist, in a London pub, and asked him to paint my portrait. I regretted this the second I arrived for my sitting. I had forgotten that Baldion would have to spend hours staring at my biggest insecurity, and then painstakingly translating it onto canvas.

The first sitting was hard. I could not shake the feeling of wanting to turn my head to face the front. I hated the fact that Baldion was openly and carefully examining the one feature I had spent years trying to hide. Yet, as the two-and-a-half-hour sitting went on, I calmed down and began to accept my feelings. I had put myself in this situation, so now I just needed to sit in it. By the second sitting, I was almost excited—not just by the thought of having an afternoon when I had an excuse to do absolutely nothing, but because it had finally sunk in that I was having my portrait done.

I was nervous to see the finished portrait.

When I looked at the picture, I couldn’t help but smile back.

“Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day.” What crosses your mind when you think of tomorrow? Some people think of the future literally like the next day. To others, it means the unknown. To me, it signifies hope.

Every day, on the way to and from school I pass by a children’s hospital. One morning, as I was hurrying to school, I noticed a child staring out of a small window on the first floor. The next minute I tripped (绊倒) and sprawled on the ground. As I slowly pulled myself up and dusted myself off, I looked up again and saw the child laughing. In spite of my situation, I was pleased to have made someone laugh. I bowed as though I were a performer. The child clapped and waved at me. As I stepped closer, I saw that the girl’s head was bald, a sign that she was a cancer patient. I quickly waved one last time to her before heading for the school

The next morning and the next, I looked out for the little girl and waved to her, doing a little jig just to make her laugh. I thought about her and wondered what her life must be like. Was that how the child lived from day to day?

I felt the urge to visit the child. I went to the hospital and looked for the room facing the road. I found the little girl. She was thin and pale. When she saw me, her eyes widened with recognition and she welcomed me with a shy smile. I talked to her a bit and learned her name, Suki. The nurse who saw me talking to her later told me that Suki was a leukemia patient. Her mother died two years ago and her father was now on duty outside the country. The nurse encouraged me to visit Suki so that she would not be so lonesome. As I was leaving, Suki called to me, “Tomorrow?” I understood and said,

“Yes, tomorrow.”

After that, I popped in to visit Suki after school every day.

Two months later, Suki told me the good news.

Life never really turns out the way we expect it to. We have dreams and expectations. And dream-come-true stories are everywhere — except, it may seem, in our own lives.

As a child, Barbara never quite found the bond with her parents that all children need. Her father left the family early, and her mother did menial jobs.

“I couldn’t let my life keep me from caring about other people,” she says. “Maybe it’s unfair or just the way it turns out for people, but I still have a son.”

Barbara raised her son the best she knew how and “he turned out pretty well,” she says, smiling. And after the hard years of making ends meet and giving him a good start, she made a career change.

“I never thought I was supposed to feel sorry for myself,” she says. “And I like people.”

Barbara works as an in-home caregiver for elderly people in their last year of life. She spends 10-hour days, six days a week, with people who have Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, sometimes sleeping on their sofa when they are afraid to spend a night alone. Most don’t have families close by, and Barbara becomes the person they rely on for everything: meals, bathing, bathroom duties, daily walks if they can, mental exercises like crossword puzzles and re-learning family faces.

She only charges what the family can afford and only works with one client at a time. “They become the family I never had, over and over again,” she says, laughing.

The spaces left empty in Barbra’s childhood are filled with memories shared with her from lives fading away in the dusk. For 30 years, she has been making people feel good at a time when most would just be waiting to die, alone and unnoticed. When seeing their faces when they are with Barbara, you’d think the last years were the best.

“I’ve found something I never had,” Barbara says. “We make each other happy. So I try to give them what they want most.”

She’s learned from her experiences that old people want their loved ones to visit them.

I posted Barbara’s story online to call on children to visit their parents.