Note: Consider this as a sequel to my "Death shall have no dominion" post. I had written that our clan’s stoic attitude to death had a comic streak, but I didn’t show examples. Maybe I didn’t want to sound too irreverent. Or maybe I simply had no time to add more details to an already very long blog. So, with your indulgence, let me now have some morbid fun. (Psst. Brit has an interesting way of writing her blogs in list form. I’m trying it out here and see how it turns out.)
- When the doctors made it clear that Mama’s medical situation was very critical and the inevitable would come in a matter of days or even hours, the four of us went into an instant caucus. We quickly ruled against “pulling the plug,” and resolved to make her remaining days as comfortable and happy as possible. She had long been in stupor, so we had to more or less guess what she would have wanted us to do. My older brother Rafael asked: “Maybe she is holding on because she’s waiting for someone who hasn’t visited yet, or for something that hasn’t been done yet...?”
- So we called on as many relatives to visit Mama every day. Each visitor brought food and drink of all kinds. There was much talk, laughter and music. It was like a daily mini-reunion for the clan. We have pics showing us smiling at the camera while we stood or sat around Mama’s bed, as if she was the centerpiece of our enjoyment. Sometimes we teased our unconscious mother: “Ma, if you’re waiting for that bastard bitch cousin to drop by and pay you back the fifty grand she owed you, don’t. Will never happen, Ma. Not in a hundred years.”
- But, like in all other aspects of life, there can be a surfeit of food and drink, visitors and reunions, laughter and jokes. My sister Isabel asked, “So what else has not been done?” Extreme unction. Of course. Our mother was extremely religious, so it figured. A parish priest had earlier given Mama the Catholic last rites, but it was euphemistically called Anointment of the Sick. And it was in English. That won’t do, we said. We must call a spade a spade. So we asked a cousin, a priest whom Mama regarded with utmost reverence, to hold another last rites, call it by its proper name Extreme Unction, and do it in her native language.
- This cousin priest was a cool cowboy from the boondocks. Surprisingly, he brought along a laptop bag. At first I thought he was going to perform the rites on Powerpoint. It turned out that his bag contained his holy oils and related stuff. He did the last rites as expected. After we finished with the last Amen, he proceeded to regal all of us with clan secrets about illicit dalliances and children born out of wedlock. Mama’s vital signs improved for one day after that, then deteriorated again.
- It was my younger brother Gabriel’s turn to suggest, “Maybe Mama didn’t like the rites because it wasn’t in Latin. (In her later years, Mama returned to fundamentalist Catholicism and attended only Latin Masses.) We must re-do it in Latin.” And so we got another priest to perform a much more elaborate Rites of Extreme Unction in Latin. This priest was in medieval garb, had more vials of holy oil than Mary Magdalene, and carried sliced bread and lime in a ziploc bag for God knows what purpose. It was pure abracadabra. Again, Mama’s condition improved a bit, then went down again.
- Meanwhile, three members of the clan claimed that they dreamed roughly the same dream. They said that Papa (already 10 years dead) paid the old house a visit and asked everyone to stop all this nonsense because he’s here to fetch Mama anyway. The day after that, our mother passed away. It wasn’t clear if she finally let go because of the thrice-held Catholic rites, or because her darling beloved sweetheart of olden days had finally come to fetch her. We were in no mood to debate the issue.
- Fast forward to the frenzy of the four-day wake in a chapel. Four days of reunion not only of the clan, but of all kinds of friends, friends of friends, colleagues, old classmates, old neighbors, old villagemates, old townmates... Overflowing food and drink, talk and laughter. I met a grade school classmate, a member of the famous Khi-Rho girls that I hadn’t seen in 40 years. Some of you will recall my blog about my near-fatal attraction with a beach beauty. Some families from that village stayed through the four-day wake. I won’t be honest if I say I didn’t enjoy the reunions.
- Another fast forward to the burial site. We had opened Mama’s casket one last time, to place small items that, in traditional belief, she will need to carry with her to the afterlife. (I blogged about this ritual in how we sent off Papa 10 years earlier.) A line of old women – all members of the clan – helped do the honors. They began howling and gesticulating in that ritualized wail of mourning that typically accompany funerals in many peasant cultures.
- One of the wailers was Aunt Soledad, an old peasant woman that I blogged about earlier. The ritualized wailing contained genuinely-felt sorrow, but this particular aunt was overdoing it, turning it into melodrama. “Aaaaaaiiiii-yyyyeeeeee cousin sister Juliana, so much you did to help me in our younger days.... Aaaaaaiiiii-yyyyeeeeee cousin sister I haven’t paid you back enough.... Aaaaaaiiiii-yyyyeeeeee cousin sister I watched over you when you got sick.... Aaaaaaiiiii-yyyyeeeeee cousin sister now that you lie there all alone, who is going to watch over you.... Aaaaaaiiiii-yyyyeeeeee cousin sister I pity you pity you... Aaaaaaiiiii-yyyyeeeeee cousin sister cousin sister let me go with you to the grave so I can continue to serve you.... Aaaaaaiiiii-yyyyeeeeee cousin sister let me go with you to the grave....”
- Aunt Soledad flails her hands as she wails inconsolably over Mama’s open casket. One second she looks like she would collapse, the next second she looks like she would climb into the casket and join my dead mother. Her son rushes to her side and tries to pull her away. The strong peasant woman will not be held back. But she is delaying the ceremony too much. I tell her, “Auntie, I didn’t you had plans to join Mama. You should have told us earlier so we could make a reservation for extra space in the grave. Now we have a problem...” She stops wailing, looks at me with quizzical eyes, and barely suppresses a chuckle. In her mind, she must have said, “You idiot, you just ruined my act!”
- After the casket is lowered to the ground and freshly-dug soil is tamped back to ground level by the cemetery crew, some clanmates notice that Mama’s niche was placed right on top of Papa’s niche, laid there 10 years earlier. We explain that it’s part of the pre-need cemetery plan. But we also notice the unintended symbolism. Later, while discussing if we want to redo the marble epitaph now that our parents are reunited in one grave, a naughty brother suggests this: “Here lies a loving couple, with Mama on top of Papa, as usual.”
- The hundred-plus mourners mill around the grave for another hour of impromptu tete-a-tetes, eating biscuits and drinking fruit juice, enjoying the quiet shade of a fiery-red acacia in full bloom and the gentle monsoon breeze. Then, we all load up to our respective vehicles. To go on our separate ways? Hell, no. We ride in a long convoy back to the old house, where rows upon rows of banquet food are waiting for us and other people who could not make it to the cemetery. For more food and drink, music and laughter, to celebrate the eternal dance of life and death.
