Ate Rosing and Ate Conching
on Mid Life Angst (Zambia), 08/Mar/2009 05:31, 34 days ago
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Back in the day, when we were still living inPagsanjan, Ate Rosing and Ate Conching were our neighbors. We would have them over for holiday dinners and other special occasions but they didn't lack for invitations from other families living near us. Everybody knew them.They had both retired from“ the service”. They had come to town many, many years before from various parts of the Philippines to work as helpers in different households. Their employers had migrated or died or gone away. They stayed behind, eventually sharing a small rented room together. I suppose they had been away from their families for so long that “going home” (wherever this was) was no longer an option. This was the neighborhood they were familiar with.They lived on selling rice cakes and doing the occasional job for families in the neighborhood. In their spare time, they were church-ladies - part of a small army of elderly women who kept house for the parish priest and attended all the church activities.I haven’t seem them for awhile but heard about them recently. Ate Rosing can’t take care of herself anymore. Ate Conching has terminal cancer. They now have to rely on the kindness of neighbors. Somebody comes to give Ate Rosing a bath once a week. Another accompanies Ate Conching to her doctor’s appointments. When the end comes, the neighbors will take care of them.There is something both sad and uplifting about this story. While death is inevitable for all of us, kindness unfortunately does not always come as naturally. Death comes unbidden but kindness can only beget itself.Ate Rosing and Ate Conching are quiet, simple women who have lead what may seem as uneventful lives. But, in their quiet simplicity, they have left a mark. They will not go unforgotten.
