ACT OF MERCY

ACT OF MERCY

It is not very easy for a senior citizen who wants to be useful to find something worthy of doing. Oftentimes, joining conversations with other senior citizens, results only to exchange of ailments and other depressing problems.

Joining a youth group most of the time only magnifies and widens the reality of generation gap. Keeping alone by oneself is even more depressing if not really agonizing. It helps me to while away my moments by writing something in the computer or surfs for some important topics to be printed later. Sometimes I exchange ideas through the internet or have conference with my children abroad. I also enter my thoughts into my blogspot and make friends with the Friendster user. I have counseling clients from as far as Tacloban, Sweden, Sydney and India.

I found out that doing acts of mercy is most fruitful. I visit other lonely, isolated and semi-abandoned seniors. By just listening to their often repeated complaints and nostalgic recollection of their bygone days is enough to make them feel alive and forget their ailments for a while.

A mother whose children are all away while she is living alone with the maids in a big house is pathetic. Sometimes she is victimized by sweet-talking agents of this and that product. One still physically active male is pitifully affected by all the negative views he is seeing and experiencing around him that sometimes he wants t o send a letter to the Holy Pope to complain about using “ginoo” in the tagalog version of Hail Mary.

A rich accountant with a very serious lung problem wishes to live up to 95 just to keep company with his young even if abusive maids.

The constant request of one stroke victim is very fulfilling on my side because I see how refresh he feels after airing to me his ideas and opinions.

Caressing a lamenting grandmother whose grandson is not attending school but spending all the money sent by his mother from abroad is not a very pleasant act but very encouraging if not actually rejuvenating.

There is now a wild rumor saying that some groups are kidnapping kids so they can sell their body organs to some hospitals. I jokingly say: “Why doesn’t this group kidnap elders either?” They can still make use of the senior citizen’s thick skin that they can transform into a bullet proof jacket.

Visiting different seniors with their own weird behavior and unusual problems gives me a great sense of achievement at the end of the day.