NAMELESS

THE DEATHS of the nameless, faceless people we hear about every day usually bring only transient sympathy. The feeling lingers for just a minute before it slips away. Yet, it keeps our feet firmly on the ground, reminding us that life is fleeting, as are the memories of images passing our sight and the emotions that go with them.

I came to validate this thought when I heard about the death of a sidewalk vendor whose face I used to see every day on my commute to work. I called him Tatay or Manong, as I never knew his real name. He was one of the many familiar, nameless faces that populate my daily routine—like the jeepney drivers in our subdivision, the barkers, mall guards, churchgoers, beggars, and the vendors occupying street corners and bus stops along my usual path. Our interactions were simple: a smile now and then, a familiar look.

Biak-na-Bato Street, Quezon City

He must have been around 70 years old, lanky, with square shoulders that seemed perpetually propped up by a clothes hanger. His skin was as brown as the soil, weathered to the texture of prunes. I almost always saw him wearing faded shirts and shorts. His kariton—a wooden cart about the size of a standard office desk—had extended posts at each corner covered by a recycled tarpaulin. It housed a wide variety of merchandise: yosi (the street term for cigarettes), gum, candies, biscuits, pens, tabloids, and packets of instant coffee, mostly 3-in-1 blends. I was his suki, a regular buyer of his instant coffee and SkyFlakes crackers.

He parked his cart on a portion of an asphalted street near a sectarian school on Biak-na-Bato Street. I always wondered why sidewalk vendors, despite their name, prefer to occupy the edge of the road rather than the sidewalk itself. His regular patrons were the daily passersby: employees heading to nearby offices, residents, students, churchgoers bound for the massive Dominican church nearby, and commuters waiting at the loading zones along Quezon Avenue.

His highly visible spot stood just a stone’s throw away from where two holdup men had been gunned down by the city police two or three months prior. It was also very close to a Land Transportation Office (LTO) branch, where cunning and accommodating fixers abounded, completely ignoring a prominent sign that read, "Bawal ang Fixer Dito" (Fixers Prohibited Here).

The last time I asked Manong for a packet of 3-in-1 coffee from his mobile sari-sari store, he was fanning himself with a folded tabloid.

"Naubos," he said with a toothless grin.

That was just two days before I heard the news of his death. Manong had fallen victim to a hit-and-run. He was crossing the four-lane expanse of Quezon Avenue, clutching a bottle of Red Horse beer, in a section of the road where pedestrians were forbidden to cross. A speeding van struck him before he could reach the safety of the other side. He was gone like wisps of cigarette smoke—a nameless death. He was erased from the surface of the earth, and even the memory of him would soon wash away, just like his bloodstain on the asphalt.

I wondered why I cared so much that he died that day. Tomorrow is no different from yesterday, save for the absence of that familiar kariton in its usual spot.

The next morning on my way to work, I bought a 3-in-1 coffee from a different store. As I sipped my warm cup, a thought crossed my mind: there is a world I belong to, and there is a world I am merely passing through. And I realized how often I bother myself with things I cannot reach—or things that even death cannot treat with respect.