Getting old, riding the bus

Where I share a few experiences of dealing with the elderly.

I’m kicking off this column with an apology to all my readers. My last post was in December, and that’s way too big a gap. But sometimes life gets in the way.

It’s not that I haven’t been busy. Driving a bus is always busy, but alongside that, the summer holidays were had, another bout of Covid knocked me over for a week, and family took precedence for the remainder.

I’ve been mulling this column for a few weeks, and it’s been difficult to write, to find the right tone, and to tell the stories so you understand and appreciate what an effect they had on me.

But before I leap into it—some big news for me. A vacancy for the union delegate in the Karori depot came up. I decided to put my name into the hat. There was an election, and I’m humbled and happy to say I won.

I’ll be assisting with any issues that drivers are experiencing around shifts, allowances, and entitlements—standing up for the rights of the drivers and ensuring that work-to-rule is adhered to. 2024 will be an interesting time for public transport with the government cutting funding in favour of building roads for private vehicles, and in Wellington, there are different and strident opinions around the cycleway implementation and the pedestrianisation of the Golden Mile. Both of these issues affect public transport. More on this in a future column.

A gratuitous picture of Wellington on a beautiful summer evening.

On to the point of this post.

Over the last twelve months, I’ve spent a lot of time with my 95-year-old Mum. Mum’s small flat in a rural Hawkes Bay town suffered during Cyclone Gabrielle. Not devastation, but more, inundation. Mum was carried from her home in the early hours of the morning by two burly (and she assures me) handsome firemen, as water lapped around their ankles.

Mum’s life as she knew it was upended. She moved to a rest home in Wellington for respite care, which quickly became permanent.

My sister and I have spent the last year navigating, and sometimes battling, government bureaucracy and the rest home environment to get Mum settled. Administering the repair of Mum’s home, then wading through acres of forms with MSD to secure a government-supported residential loan, and then arranging for the sale of her home (it’s still for sale—contact me if you’re interested). All through this Mum’s emotions bounced up and down. She’s settled, but at the same time believes she shouldn’t be there, telling me: “Everyone is so old.”

So, where’s this going?

Well, when I have old people hop on my bus I always think of my Mum, and I empathise with, and appreciate, the older folk who are still able (some barely) to continue to take public transport. Some elderly people simply don’t have a choice but to use public transport, so it’s not unusual to see a pensioner with a two-wheeled-shopping trolley laden with groceries struggling onto a bus.

There’s a gentleman who I have delivered a few times to a stop in Miramar, who is a sprightly 93-year-old (his age was confirmed to me by another passenger who knew him). Immaculately dressed, a tan-coloured bomber jacket, with darker-tanned polyester trousers, and polished brown shoes—a typical old-man ‘uniform’. He’s supple enough that I don’t need to lower the bus when he gets off.

On this particular day, I greeted him warmly and asked him how he was.

“I’m still here…” he sighed.

It sounded bad, but I figured it was nothing more than a statement of fact. I’ve seen him since, and he remains sprightly, and chatty.

Contrast that with my next experience.

I was coming to the end of the trip, with one person left on the bus—an elderly, and quite frail woman. She rang the bell for the next stop and I pulled over. Getting out of her seat, she shuffled to the front of the bus.

“Excuse me, driver. Could you help me?” she asked.

“Sure, what do you need?”

“I wonder if you could help me across the road and down to my house. I’m a bit unsteady and I’ve fallen over and got a bump on my head, and I’m nervous I’ll do it again.”

“No problem. Let’s go!”

I put the bus in neutral, applied the handbrake, and lowered the bus as low as it would go. I took her arm and helped her down, and then we slowly made our way across the road and then along to her house a further 50 metres down the street. We got to her driveway where she was ready to let go, but there was a slope up to her front door.

“I think I’ll be OK from here,” she said.

“No. I’ll take you up this little slope so you’re on flat ground,” I replied.

“Oh, that’d be wonderful. There’s just nothing to hold on to.”

I haven’t seen her since, but each time I drive past her house I think about the ways I could build a handrail to help her get down to the road more easily.

As we walked slowly down the road I said: “Next time, just ask the driver to drop you off right outside your house.”

Contrast this gentle, and for me heartwarming experience with what happened later that same day.

In Wellington, SuperGold cards can only be used by the elderly on weekdays between 9 am and 3 pm, and then after 6.30 pm. They can be used all weekend and on public holidays.

A couple in their late 60’s (I’m guessing) hop on my bus in an affluent suburb. It’s around 5.15 pm. The woman gets on first and flashes her SuperGold card. I begin to tell her that she needs to pay cash or use a Snapper. Before I can finish, the man gets on and uses his Snapper. The woman ignores me and continues to walk down the bus, as I’m trying to explain to the man that he could have Snapped them both on. He’s calling out to her. She turns and looks at him, and then carries on to her seat.

I said to her, in what I realise was a passive-aggressive tone, “OK, so looks like I’m giving you a free ride. The least you could do is say ‘thank you’.”

No response.

What struck me about this situation was the woman’s absolute sense of entitlement, and it made me pretty angry. The gentleman seemed genuine, but the woman had no intention of engaging in conversation to resolve the situation, or to—heaven forbid—apologise.

I was running late, so I let it go. It does no one any good to get het up about these situations. But it rankled me. I don’t feel great about the conversation that I had with them, but at the same time, a bit of respect was due to me as well. I haven’t seen them since, but I hope I will handle the situation differently next time.

The very next day, I was doing my second #4 route from Strathmore to Mairangi. It’s a new route that joins what used to be #12 with #22. It takes around 75 minutes to drive it one way. I love driving this route. It’s long, and at times technically challenging. You also have a very diverse group of passengers, from university students to commuters, to some seriously lower socio-economic people.

I picked up an elderly woman in Kilbirnie at the main bus stop. She wasn’t familiar with the #4 and didn’t know where Mairangi was. I explained where the bus went as well as I could. She was keen to understand if there were buses that did the return journey, which on the face of it is a strange question to ask at ten past ten in the morning. I gave her some reassurance, telling her buses ran every fifteen minutes. She hopped on with her SuperGold card, and off we went.

I had a pretty full bus into and through town. Heaps of people get off at Victoria University, and then the passenger numbers begin to thin out as we head up towards the suburb of Northland.

Throughout the journey, I watched this woman in my rear-vision mirror. She sat so upright that her back was off the seat behind her, and she was intently interested in everything inside and outside the bus, her head darting this way and that as she took in the sights.

Near the end of the trip, she was the sole passenger. She inched her way to the front to ask me where the turnaround was.

“It’s the next stop,” I said.

“Oh, thank you so much for the ride. I live in an old people’s home and there’s not much to do, so I thought I’d get out and see the city.”

My heart nearly broke. She’d made that comment so plaintively. I gave her some options on how to get back to Kilbirnie.

I told her “You can cross the road here and wait at that stop for the #4 that returns the same way. Or, another more exciting option would be to walk down that road there and take the #14 back into town and over Roseneath to Kilbirnie.”

I wished her well and headed off Not in Service. I hope she enjoyed her adventure.

That particular incident reminded me of my Mum. When our twin boys were born we lived in Ponsonby in Auckland. In the very early days after the boys were born, Mum came up to visit and help out. She was 73 at the time. In the few opportunities she had for some time alone, she’d walk to the top of our street and hop on the CityLink bus. At that time it cost $1 and she could sit on it as long as she wanted. She might do a few circuits (from memory, each one took an hour) and then return home regaling us with the sights she’d seen. From then on the CityLink was renamed “Mum’s Bus”.

I’ll leave you with one last story.

A woman hopped on the bus in Newtown—we were heading to Strathmore. She was quite frail helped along with a walking stick, and struggling with a bag of groceries. I lowered the bus to make it a bit easier for her.

She sat down in the accessibility seat. This is a seat with plenty of room close to the front of the bus. The only problem on this day was that the STOP button at that location was hard to press so there were a few instances already that day when passengers had to shout out to me to “Stop the bus!”

As I turned into Taiaroa Street in Strathmore I sensed some activity behind me. I assumed this woman wanted to get off at the next bus stop, so I pulled over. She came to the front and looked at me strangely. Something wasn’t right. She began to get off the bus.

“Sorry. Did you want the last stop?” I asked her.

She looked back at me. “Yes. I couldn’t push the button,” she said.

“Hop back on the bus. In a couple of minutes I’ll be coming back this way and I can drop you where you need to be.”

She climbed back on board and we did the final loop to the Strathmore terminus and then headed back the way we had come, towards the stop she had originally struggled to call for. I pulled up at the corresponding stop on the other side of the missed stop.

“Thank you, driver!” She was pointing at the house before the stop, with the biggest smile. Turns out she was so close to her home, and was elated to not have to walk far.

I haven’t seen her since, but if I do, I’ll suggest we do the same thing. All part of ‘my’ service to ‘my’ passengers. No one was made late with this maneuver. No one complained. No fares were lost with looking after this lovely woman.

Next time you’re taking a bus, and you see an elderly person struggling to get on, or to drag their groceries up into the bus, think about lending a hand. It does make you feel good. Elderly people deserve all the respect we can give them, especially those who have no alternative to taking the bus. They are some of my favourite passengers.

I’m trying to find a way to get my old Mum onto one of my bus trips. She’d love to get out of the rest home and see a bit of the city from a high vantage point.

This has got me thinking…

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I want to dedicate this column to David Slack’s mum, who recently passed away, somewhat unexpectedly, despite her advanced age. David wrote a beautiful column describing his last conversation with her.