No time for retirement

THROUGH Facebook, an opportunity to re-discover – and exchange messages with – old friend Bing (from the 1970s) presented itself the other day. Eusebio “Bing” San Diego and I used to write regularly for the weekly Mod magazine when he was already a public school teacher. He has retired from teaching but occasionally finds time to write letters to the editor for Manila dailies.

Writing keeps the brain well-oiled. It forces us to remember and use words that could have escaped our consciousness. But it’s just one of the many ways we earthlings cling to the past.

As for me, whenever I participate in karaoke singing, I belt the nostalgic Yesterday When I was Young.

Indeed I often remember my youth while sighing over the question, “Where have all the good old days gone?” It seemed only yesterday when I was aspiring to be a successful journalist. But now I am young once and still incapable of a worry-free retirement. Is that something to deplore over at age 68?

I prefer not to regret. I delight in looking back to that distant day in 1969 when, as a teenage Journalism student, I visited the office of the defunct Weekly Nation magazine in Quezon City to contribute an article. It surprised me that the editor was Consorcio Borje (now deceased), whose short stories I had read in high school. He looked very old, probably in his late 70s.

His brother David was likewise an aging reporter at the defunct Daily Express when I began pounding the entertainment beat for the same paper in 1972.

I was to learn later that the Borje brothers had asked to be allowed to work till death on the pretext that they loved their work, and quitting might facilitate their appointment with the Lord.

Now I imagine myself in their shoes, having turned 68. I sometimes worry that I might not live as long as Borje. What if my atherosclerosis — an ailment characterized by inflammation of the artery – has worsened? There was a time when I collapsed while trying to get up on bed due to a sudden attack of vertigo.

On second thought, as a freelance journalist, I can’t stop writing and still survive. No government or private agency would look after me. I am too proud to rely on my only son, a nurse in New York.

The vitamin advertisement “Bawal magkasakit” strikes at the core of the bitter reality that the average senior citizen eventually turns poor in this country – no thanks to expensive medicine and hospitalization. My late parents, both educators, had exhausted their retirement money that way. My father died of cancer; my mom, of accident.

On second thought, there are incentives to go on living. I now enjoy a privilege available to senior citizens only, such as value-added-tax exemption plus 20% discount on food, medicine, entertainment and transportation, among others.

Spending money on hospital and medicine I would rather be spared of. It is no joke that people have died of high blood pressure after receiving their medical bills.

But of course, it is a “given” that as man rises in age, his vitality falls. Take it from the Bible: “Our days may come to seventy years, or eighty, if our strength endures” (Psalm 90:10).

There could be no adventure without traversing the path from womb to tomb. In fact, the young ones beg of us young once to tell them what adventures we have lived through. (hvego31@gmail.com/PN)