A COUSIN had mentioned, rather candidly, why is it almost always only during wakes and funerals that friends and distant relations from the old neighborhood meet each other and get together?
Interesting or gross as that may have been, I thought and like to believe, that must be the universe’s way of mixing our grief with the delight of seeing people from your past, so that the resultant moment is not so sad and heavy.
The natural banter among us in the gathering, particularly when talking about how the departed one had lived, is casual and filled with light recollections, devoid of crisp and stiff testimonies often heard at other, more formal occasions.
I sometimes wonder how it is with other cultures. I once witnessed a funeral in some faraway land where a large crowd, predominantly in black, just stood stoically, not mindful of each other, while the casket was lowered into the ground.
After that, while only a few lingered, almost all have gone to leave. Perhaps that one example may not qualify as an accurate description of the general character of those people, but nevertheless, compared to our Pinoy mindset, I have noticed we are definitely more community-oriented than other cultures.
Another thought had come during yesterday’s interment of our relative. Once again, it runs around the topic of our collective grief. I recall a mantra that read: “Whatever we run from, pursues us, and what we face, transforms us.”
Relatedly, as I have mentioned before, there is no running from our grief because it waits and comes when we’re unguarded and least expect it. The pastor at the funeral had said, quite succinctly, “death does not have the last word,” and that struck deeply.
He had clearly implied, despite the gravity of all that loss and grief bring in, love and the celebration of life win out in the end. So, no matter how hard it feels sometimes in the midst of the fog we lose our way in, we have these with which we draw strength from.
As we said our goodbyes to our distant relatives at the memorial park, one had said in passing what past Decembers have brought us in our clan’s history, recalling several deaths we had during the yuletide month.
It’s precisely this, I thought, during Christmastime and from then on, we not only celebrate His birth, but also celebrate the life of our beloved kin and relatives and the precious time spent with us. A double treat.
