Life after malling

The Quezon City General Hospital along Seminary Road a block off Congressional Avenue looks under the plain light of day like a period piece of architecture, what one might even dub a post art-deco building of some sort, indeed a curious rundown hybrid of a structure undergoing constant renovation. On the third floor of QC Gen, often confused with the East Avenue Medical Center beside SSS, is a hospice unit run by the SM Foundation, one of two across the country.

The foundation runs other civic-conscious nooks in various government hospitals and barangay halls, such as activity centers for children and recreation halls for the elderly.

On the day we drop by the hospice unit, accompanied by SM Foundation executive director Connie Angeles, two of the beds in the five-bed capacity ward are occupied by terminally ill patients. Formerly the rather depressing female charity ward, the SM hospice unit has walls brightly painted, an impressive 20-plus inch TV set, and enough space to wait out the time it takes to manage pain felt by the patient and the corresponding grief and anxiety of relatives.

"Ideally, they should stay here from one to two weeks, to train the relatives how to better care for their sick loved ones at home," says hospice unit-in-charge Dr. Rachel Rosario. There however have been instances when some patients were seemingly abandoned by relatives who could not cope with the stress of watching over the sick. "But we could easily trace them, since they usually come from nearby depressed areas," she says, adding they have records with the local social welfare unit which also helps in the referral of cases.

"Pain management" is what the hospice unit is there for, according to the hospital’s Dr. Laarni Malapit, in order to make the dying one’s remaining days a bit more bearable, including the administering of doses of morphine if necessary. The relatives, hanging on to the last straws of hope, are provided psychological counseling to cope with the inevitable and perhaps imminent loss of a loved one, mostly due to cancer.

It is, on the whole, worlds apart from what we generally associate the SM Group of Companies to stand for, so far away the hospice unit is from the malls with their racket of video arcades and fastfood outlets and restaurants, not to mention the overwhelming influence of mammon, such that the mall itself has already become a cultural archetype and gathering place that has replaced the park and recreation center. At the QC Gen hospice unit, where dying is made less painful and its aftermath a bit more manageable, the mall that SM is known for becomes almost a distant memory. Or does it? Who knows what goes in the mind entering the twilight zone, intimation of skating rinks?

"You have to have the temperament for it," Rosario says, referring to situations dealing with the terminally ill. And the stoic demeanor of hospital head nurse Marilou Palafox, from Ilocos, would suggest that she has the temperament for it.

Apart from the hospice units, the foundation also manages activity centers, generically called Felicidad Sy Activity Centers–after the wife of Foundation chairman Henry Sy Sr., the man who built all this starting from a shoebox of a store along Carriedo to become today the second richest man in the Philippines, as per the Forbes magazine list– located in the pediatrics section of public hospitals.

This brainchild came out of Angeles’ own experience with her kids, whom she noticed were always scared of hospitals. "Now they have a place to play in while waiting for their appointment with the pediatrician," says Angeles, a former Quezon City vice mayor and actress who appeared in the 1960s classic Trudis Liit with Vilma Santos, in which she played the dog-bitten younger sister of Trudis, Auring.

Known as the Sentrong Musmos, the children’s play and waiting area approximates the ambience found in similar play corners and children’s libraries, though here it is understandably more sober and understated because located in hospital.

"It was inspired by Miggy’s corner," Angeles says, referring to a project by another private group that set up a play area for kids in a hospital.

In the Sentrong Musmos at the East Avenue Medical Center, the walls are again brightly painted, the place well furnished with little tables and chairs, a plastic jungle gym and rubber pads, and modestly stocked with books and light reading fare from Dr. Seuss to Reader’s Digest. Of course the center is not too extravagant as to encourage kids to get sick more often so as to visit the place again, but it is nevertheless a place where Auring Liit would be well accommodated.

Less than an hour’s drive across town would take us to a recreation hall for the elderly in Bicutan, Parañaque, the same site where President Arroyo held her first town hall meeting or "pulongbayan", not that she already qualifies to be a senior citizen.

The Bicutan activity center for the old is a spacious affair with the trademark gaily colored walls, a dance floor where the lolos and lolas can dance if they want exercise and a bit of human contact, a couple or so chess sets on spanking new tables ostensibly to prevent the onset of Alzheimer’s, but what the heck, they can always turn it to checkers. There’s also a TV set and a shiny sound system, which the caretaker says she safekeeps in her barangay hall office nearby, and takes out whenever there are presidential or other important visitors or when the olds themselves want to listen to some oldies but goldies, maybe even at full blast.

The elderly center was inaugurated when Joey Marquez was still mayor, so that the façade used to have his initials on it. But after the recent elections, JPM has been reshaped to JB, after the incumbent Mayor Jun Bernabe.

The President was said to have liked the place so much she ordered lunch and stayed a few hours, and there is a little rocking chair in the hall to honor her visit.

"There was no controversy about beso-beso," the caretaker recalls, unlike a pulongbayan held at another place.

Overall, Angeles says there are about 16 going on 17 SM activity centers nationwide–comprising hospices, play areas, and centers for the elderly, from Cavite to Davao and Iloilo and back–such that wherever there is an SM mall, a civic-conscious center is also located if not a stone’s throw away, then certainly a jeepney or taxi ride away.

The Foundation also has a scholarship program that presently helps put through some 400 students through different colleges across the country, and a medical outreach program with a mobile clinic providing basic medical, dental, x-ray services to outlying areas.

"It is just SM’s way of giving back," says Angeles, who will soon meet up again with Kumareng Vilma when the outreach travels to Lipa City.

We’ve heard it said how SM has got it all, this time the foundation’s activity centers are about "people helping people". It’s a new angle to the old mall obsession, making us denizens aware that there is life and death and maybe even a bit of the afterlife after malling. And we almost hear Louie Armstrong sing, "What a wonderful world!" out of the bargain bins of dirty surrealism.