The Retirement Years

The Retirement Years (1983-1991)

When Lola Coring retired in 1983, she availed of the lumpsum package which she used to fund her travel to Baguio City with Lolo Jose - a dream she kept on postponing owing to the fact that she would always put other's well-being before her very own. She also bought our first ever television - a coloured one, which she had to pawn years later to help a daughter in need. It must have been tough letting the television go for it was very special to her. But again, she could not bear the thought of not being able to help.

But the period after the trip to Baguio, life took a different turn as the whole country plunged into economic depression. Lolo and Lola struggled to keep the family (which now consist of their five grandchildren living with them) alive and together. As if the economic hardship was not enough, Lola started showing signs of ill health which, we knew later on, started years back as a result of her injury when she featured in a motorcycle accident on her way to visit her son's family in Toledo City. First was the intermittent loss of memory and sometimes not knowing what she was doing, then the slurred speech on her left mouth, then the numbness on her left body, then the difficulty walking with her left leg and then the need to be totally cared for. By then, it was just her and Lolo left in the ancestral house.

During the time when Lola's health was deteriorating, the eldest of the five grandchildren living with them managed to finish her College education and landed a job immediately after and took the four younger siblings to live with her in the city to ease Lolo's burden so he could just focus on looking after Lola Coring. The year before she died, am sure Lola still recognised us everytime we paid her a visit but speech was very limited, if not impossible. All she could do was cry and we would cry together. We could only hope they were tears of joy knowing that her sacrifices for us, her grandchildren, did not come to naught. She died peacefully in her sleep on June 1991.

Wherever Lola is now, we are sure she must have been very proud of the life she had lived and how she made a difference in the lives of those who crossed path with her.