The LRT Line 2 train runs from Santolan station in Pasig City to Recto Avenue station in downtown Manila and back. In every LRT train, the first coach, called “Courtesy Coach” is reserved for senior citizens, physically disabled and pregnant women.
Many times, I have boarded that coach.
The train ride takes quite a short while from end to end, so one has time to observe unobtrusively the old men and women who pack the compartment. The bodies are often withered and shriveled.
When they enter or get out, they shamble or shuffle, dragging one foot along, wobbling, needing to hold on to something to steady themselves. Many of the faces look haggard, daunt, hollow-eyed, forlorn.
It is easy to imagine that each one is either fighting a personal battle, enduring a chronic or terminal sickness, lamenting an indiscretion, nursing a hurt or bearing a heavy burden, trying to forget a great disappointment and so on.
During those brief rides, I have overheard snatches of conversation, audible because seniors often speak loudly usually because of defective hearing that’s common to old folks.
I enjoy the cheery chatter and the breezy banter, noticeably much more animated when everyone is bound for home in Antipolo, Marikina, Cainta or any other town located in the east.
When there is an available space, I sit down and strike a conversation with those beside me. Surprisingly, when you have exchanged smiles and broken the ice, all are only too open to tell you his or her own unique story, as if on cue.
One such seatmate was Mang D. A white-haired widower (I estimated he was in his mid-sixties). He narrated how he was visiting his son and family in a condominium in Sta. Mesa. While there, a pet dog of his grand kid escaped from the unit and feeling guilty, Mang D. looked everywhere for the dog in vain.
That night, he felt shunned by the coldness of his son and wife, because his grandson was inconsolable. The day I met him at the coach, he was going to ride a bus bound for the North to go back to the farm he left. His last words to me : “Mahirap dito sa Maynila. At ayaw ko nang tumira sa hindi ko sariling bahay. [It is difficult here in Manila. I no longer want to live in a house that is not mine.]”
His plight caused me to recall the film “Tokyo Story” by Yasujiro Ozu. It depicts the plight of visiting parents who are treated as an ” inconvenience” by their sons and daughters living in the big city and too busy to pay much attention to them. Soon the mother dies, and the widowed father becomes resigned to the solitude he must endure in his home in the old town. A poignant story that still happens in our so-called enlightened present society.
Once I met a former acquaintance of mine, named Larry, an ad executive. I learned he was going home after a long day. In his 60s, he looked drained and tired.
From our conversation, I gathered that he and his old-time colleague had just pitched to retain an old account to the new young brand manager who replaced the old manager who just retired. They were competing with another ad agency staffed with youthful go-getters.
My friend’s team made their pitch but my friend had resigned himself to the fact that they would surely lose the account. I tried buoying up his hopes, but it was a perfunctory gesture .
Business is cruel and brutal to old people. More specially the advertising business, which prizes young, fresh-looking faces, because it is assumed that the young are sharper and smarter. There is no courtesy coach for advertising people who have reached age 60 (if you manage to last that long.) On another train ride, I happened to hear a heartbreaking story that still haunts me. The coach was sparsely occupied. So I had the luxury of sitting down.
Seated at the bench opposite mine were a man and woman, I reckoned maybe in their 70s. I could sense that the woman, most probably his wife, looked pale and limp. When I came into the coach, the other seatmates were already engaging the husband in a conversation (the wife appeared too weak to take part.)
Putting together the snatches from the exchange, I surmised that she was sick of cancer (lung or stomach, it wasn’t clear to me). They were coming back from treatment. And the husband revealed that his wife cannot take the chemo treatment anymore and they have decided to stop the treatment. They would just prepare themselves for what the future holds for the wife.
Of course, others in the coach dispensed all kinds of unsolicited advice. Some talked about new medicines that alleviate the bad side effects of chemo therapy. One mentioned the name of a doctor who uses only natural medicines.
But the couple just listened quietly, slightly smiling. “Dasal na lang [Prayers only],” was the husband’s subdued response, politely dismissing the well-meaning suggestions of other people.
At that moment, I realized that the couple have already made up their minds. His tone was that of an exhausted acceptance. This was, in a sense, their “last trip.”
I don’t know what others think but I feel that when faced with serious illness, being able to make decisions about the way you want to be treated is one of the most life-affirming things you can do. It’s a way of saying: I am alive, and it’s still my right to choose what’s best for me.
If one can’t walk into the same river twice, then the same goes for the train ride at the LRT Line 2. Every ride brings in a new rush of old folks who, in their own different ways, are bearing so much in their daily lives.
If only the walls of that coach could talk, how many more fascinating, engrossing and heartbreaking human stories they would probably tell. And each story, as someone said, is a great unwritten novel.