In a crowded and smelly alley in Tondo, Manila, Grandma Soling is known as “Soling Kuripot.” She is the old rag and newspaper seller who even a squinting eye would not miss. With her at home is her grandson Jericho, a call center agent who is already earning a good salary but life still doesn’t seem to be progressing.

Every night, there is a fight in their shack.

“La! It’s dry again?!” Jericho complained while looking at the dining table. “I just got paid, I gave you five thousand, and our food was dry and fried? Where is the money? Are you hiding it under your mat again?”

“That’s good, grandpa. It’s filling,” replied Grandma Soling as she counted the coins in her old biscuit tin. She was wearing a duster full of stitches and holes. “We need to save. We’re saving something.”

“Saving? What?! Your coffin?” Jericho shouted in frustration. “It’s embarrassing, La! My job is great, I have an iPhone, but our house is a mess! Our food is for the poor! I don’t want it anymore! I’m so sick of your greed for money!”

Out of anger, Jericho packed up. He took his things. “I’m leaving. I’ll just bedspace in Makati. You take care of your coins!”

Grandma Soling didn’t stop him. Jericho only saw the old man’s tears fall as he hugged the biscuit tin, but he didn’t say anything. Jericho left for good and didn’t show up for six months.

In Makati, Jericho’s life became good. He could eat at restaurants, buy new clothes, and sleep in the air conditioner. But every now and then, he remembered his grandmother. Especially when he heard on TV that there would be a massive demolition in their area in Tondo to build a mall.

“It’s a good thing I left,” Jericho thought. “Grandma is fine. She probably has money to pay for the relocation because of all the crooks she’s been to me.”

One morning, he received a call from a neighbor. She said that Grandma Soling was dead. She had a heart attack while talking to the demolition team.

Even though he was in a bad mood, Jericho went home. When he arrived in Tondo, he was surprised. There was no trouble. No police. No demolition team. Instead, the entire barangay was at the basketball court where Grandma Soling was buried. There were so many people. They were all crying.

As Jericho approached the coffin, Captain delos Reyes greeted him. He held out a thick brown envelope.

“Jericho,” the Captain said seriously. “This is what your grandmother left for you.”

Jericho opened the envelope. His eyes widened. Inside was the Transfer Certificate of Title of the land—not just their house, but the entire compound where fifty families live. It was named “Homeowners Association of Barangay 101.”

“What does this mean?” Jericho asked tremblingly.

“We’ve been evicted from here for fifty years,” the Captain explained. “The owner of the land wanted to sell it to a developer. But your grandmother begged. She said she would buy the land for all of us. The owner laughed at her. He said, ‘Okay, Soling, give you a deadline. When you pay the ten million in cash, the land is yours.’”

Jericho looked at his grandmother’s coffin.

“We thought she was just joking,” the Captain continued. “But every day, she sold rags. Every day, she saved. The money you gave her? The wages she took from you? Not a single cent, Jericho, your grandmother spent on herself. She put it all in the bank. The coins in the can? That was her food.”

Page: SAY – Story Around You | Original story.

A man on the side cried. “Last week, the demolition team came. Your grandmother blocked them. She brought sacks of money and checks. She paid for the land, Jericho. Cash. She saved us all. The price… was her heart. She was tired of walking and working.”

Jericho collapsed in front of the coffin. What he thought was greed turned out to be sacrifice. The “stingy” grandmother he thought was starving herself and enduring the hurtful words of her own grandson just to ensure that they would have a home that no one could ever take back.

The dry and burnt food that Jericho hated before… that was the price of their freedom.

Jericho hugged the cold glass of the coffin. “Grandma… sorry… sorry if I left you… sorry if I didn’t understand… Oh, you’re so rich. Your heart is so rich.”

On the day of the funeral, Grandma Soling was carried away not by an expensive car, but by thousands of people who walked under the hot sun—people who now had a roof over their heads because of an old man who endured being “stingy” for the future of others.