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BY HERBERT VEGO
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OVER coffee at Hotel del Rio, lawyer/journalist Pet Melliza took a photo of Peter Jimenea and me, calling us “the young ones.” He would post it on Facebook.
“Yes, we were young once, O-N-C-E,” I stressed.
At home later, I saw the Facebook photo captioned “the young once.”
Reality has a way of advancing to be recognized whenever I participate in a sing-along on karaoke, singing my favorite song 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 a aspiring to be a successful journalist. But now I am young once and still incapable of a worry-free retirement. I shake my head at the realization that my dream of quitting work at 65 has not come true.
But 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 66 and going on 67. I 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. I had to cancel my scheduled flight to Singapore as a consequence.
I can’t afford to stay sick. As a freelance journalist, I can’t stop writing and still survive. No government or private agency would look after me. After 46 years doing the only job I know, I still have not stashed away enough money to tide me over now and forever. I don’t own a house; I rent one. I own a car, but only because a benevolent giver gave me one.
I am too proud to rely on my only son, a nurse in New York, although he occasionally sends me dollars.
The vitamin advertisement “Bawal magkasakit” strikes at the core of the bitter reality that the average senior citizens eventually turn 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, why should I also die when I now enjoy a privilege available to senior citizens only? I enjoy value-added-tax exemption plus 20 percent discount on food, medicine, entertainment and transportation, among others.
But 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.
My wedding hijada, Merlyn Bayombong-Pomperada, recently gave me a 60-capsule box of Riedoc food supplement “to keep you alert mentally and physically.”
Well, that was timely; I have been suffering from loss of memory. There was a time when I could not access my e-mail because I had forgotten its password.
In times like that, I always struggle to remember. To a journalist like me, that means looking forward to more stories to write about./PN
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