The Old Lady of the Sunset

“…I walk amidst the twilight/ As the evening light fades/ While the sun still lingers/ I alone watch the lost bird/ And my heart feels melancholic…”.

(The song "I Walk Amidst the Sunset" - Van Phung)

I was born and raised in poverty in a fishing village near the Ke Ga Lighthouse. From 1959, during afternoon strolls on the beach, I would sing, "I walk amidst the sunset." Looking back, I was so romantic as a child, without realizing it! And in 1960, I left those sunset afternoons on the beach, leaving my poor fishing village to go to the city to study.

There were two early Slow Rock songs that took the South by storm at the time: "I Walk Amidst the Sunset" by Van Phung and "Life in Exile" by Lam Phuong. I chose "I Walk Amidst the Sunset" as the basis for this article, "The Old Woman of the Sunset." This was a real old woman; I saw her in 2010, but I haven't seen her since. And since "the old woman of the sunset" disappeared into the night, I haven't returned to this cafe either, because there's nothing left to enjoy.

I've lived in Ho Chi Minh City since the war ended, but I'm not a true Saigonese. Every evening at sunset, I sit at a roadside cafe on the outskirts, drinking coffee and "listening" to the sunset...

Drinking coffee was just an excuse to watch the sunset… and I noticed an old woman with a hunched back walking slowly and steadily down a short corridor. Every afternoon, except when it rained. She walked back and forth until the sun set. I called her “The Sunset Old Woman.” And once I asked her why she didn’t walk in the morning, she said she was too busy in the morning… I thought, it turns out, at her age she “still has a lot to do!”

Although her steps were somewhat weak, her legs seemed resolute, so every afternoon she would be seen walking, always going to a certain point before turning back from the starting point. She had a cane, but she didn't use it for support; instead, she clasped it tightly behind her back with both hands, seemingly only in this posture to prevent herself from falling (and she held the cane only for support in case she fell).

So many sunsets have passed, and she remains the same, and I fear that one day I will no longer see her! Looking at her, I miss my mother. My mother passed away a few years after the peace treaty , meaning she was different from her in that she never experienced peace, even though she suffered greatly from war and always longed for it!

We know that birth, aging, sickness, and death are unavoidable, but who among us doesn't "cling to life and fear death"? Just as life has many endings: the end of a river, the end of a road, the end of a season, the end of a year... all those endings can be reversed, except for the end of life itself, which cannot be returned!

For years, I've watched her; her back was arched, and as she walked, the road and her face seemed like two parallel lines. Sometimes she would glance ahead to determine her destination, then turn back, and continue walking slowly...

Getting to know her, I learned that she was from Quang Tri province and had come to Saigon to escape the war in 1974. She said she wasn't afraid of poverty, only of airplanes and artillery… And she began to reminisce about the pain of the war years… Oh, this is a "news-loving old lady."

Listening to her story, I found her life very similar to my mother's:

- There was a time when she toiled tirelessly in the fields and potato paddies... her back had endured freezing rains, scorching sun, bent over to transplant rice seedlings, hoeing, harvesting, carrying loads... all to feed her children. The resilience of that seemingly strong and enduring back is challenging time, but time is infinite, and human beings are finite, and the back has reached its limit, it must bend and cannot spring up again!

Bent backs and hunched backs—"two in one"—seem close, yet turn out to be a vast distance in life. Bent backs are necessary for survival; if poverty persists, one must continue to bend their back until their back is completely hunched... And bent backs have left behind the consequence of a hunched back.

The hunched old woman goes for her evening exercise not to live longer, but simply to wish that if she is still alive, she will have some strength to spend as much time as possible with her children and grandchildren.

And there will come a day... when the old woman with the hunched back lies down to... straighten her back forever and leave this life... I apologize for having to say this, because I once told my mother that when she lies down with her back straight and never gets up again, her life will be liberated!

This afternoon, the sun slowly sets… the sun, like a glowing red marble, disappears behind the tall buildings, the old woman of the sunset also disappears behind the dilapidated houses in the poor suburbs, and I am left alone, silently singing within myself:

"...I watched the lost bird all alone."

"But my heart feels melancholic..."

Source: https://baobinhthuan.com.vn/ba-gia-hoang-hon-111969.html