It was Mother's Day. I was on a night bus from Victoria to Angel. An old woman got on. She was carrying a sort of trolley and wanted to sit exactly where I was sitting, on the back seat in the corner. Fair enough. I helped her carry her trolley and shoved up. At a certain point she started blowing kisses to a couple of clerks working at a pizza-place. To my amusement she felt like explaining such a behaviour.
"I'm homeless," she said. "They give me a cup of tea when I go there." I couldn't really understand all what she was saying -her thick accent and her toothless mouth didn't help either- but she kept talking and I listened. I asked her how she became homeless and she told me her husband kicked her out. After having 4 children together.
Speaking of which... I asked her why her children didn't take care of her. "They don't have space, and I don't want to a burden for them anyway." How could she possibly be a burden for her own kids? I didn't go into details. And it's not my business anyway. But I thought there was something deeply wrong in the idea of this woman's children not taking care of her, just letting her sleep on the bus. She might have been a terrible mother, but still.
It is true that children are generally ungrateful towards their parents. But letting them be homeless, when they almost definitely have a sofa where their mother or father could sleep, now that is over the top. And it was even Mother's Day.
No comments:
Post a Comment