Nor even about the candles and flowers, which have through the years created a big industry for florists and candlemakers.
Indeed, I consider it a shame how people spend thousands for a funeral wreath purportedly to express sympathy for the bereaved friends or relative, money which would be better spent and appreciated if given to pay funeral costs and cover other expenses.
On All Saints Day (or All Souls’ Day) most folks make much ado over the family excursion to the cemetery. Truly remarkable is the partying that occurs in the cities of the dead on these days. There is always such an abundance of food! The "tomb watchers" would even put up tents with tables and chairs for their visitors, surrounded with coolers stuffed with drinks, juices and water.
Today, cemeteries have become almost like carnivals where one can buy junk food, snacks and drinks from big name fastfood chains. Festooned about are also banners and streamers advertising commercial brands and telecompanies. Have they no respect for the dead?
Also, one hears of caterers enjoying brisk business servicing rich families on their annual treks to the family mausoleums which are equipped not only with their own comfort rooms, airconditioned quarters, but kitchens and dining areas. That’s not just cozy — that’s ritzy!
In those cases where the dearly departed had been cremated and "enshrined" in crematoriums (or the church crypts), the family may hold the banquet in the church hall or a nearby facility.
We have no idea where this practise came from or how it begun.
In fact, the "feasting" begins during the wake of the dearly departed. It used to be just snack foods — sandwiches, cookies, candies and soft drinks brought from home.
In recent years, friends and relatives began bringing "pot luck" dishes (and still do, in most cases) to feed the streams of visitors. For the longest time, I would resist invitations to "kain kayo" because I thought it gross to eat and drink within close proximity to a corpse.
Until one day…. I had gone straight to the funeral parlor from work to offer condolences to a friend whose father had just died. I was so tired and hungry and in my state, the empanada looked appealing.
Nowadays, if the wake is in any of the funeral chapels of a "five–star" church, rest assured that the food will be catered. Busy as people are these days, it no longer is practical to bother to prepare the snacks (more often, it is dinner) for the wake. You will surely see tables and chairs outside the chapel and buffet tables laden with food. I suspect some people go eagerly to wakes because they know the food will be good there.
Also, it is no longer enough to have an organist to play while the priest says mass for the dead. More often than not, there will be a choir or other singers, a quartet of musicians, atbp.
When the Diaz family hosted the wake for beloved daughter Rio Diaz Cojuangco, a whole contingent of musical artists performed and sang in a mini-concert for the mourners. Everyone who was there, including showbiz and movie stars, was touched and awed by the grandeur of it all. One had a feeling that the wake was a celebration for Rio and her life and her voyage home to her heavenly Father.
At the wake of my good friend Nena Cuenco, widow of composer Ernani Cuenco, her friend Irma Potenciano mounted a concert every night at the chapel, featuring well known opera singers to sing best loved songs by Ernani.
These are not wakes but events that shall be long remembered.
And that’s not the end of it. After the funeral and the nine-day novena, which is always capped with a dinner party, there is the 40-day "celebration" which supposedly marks the time when the soul of the dearly departed is released so it can go to heaven.
We always presume our dearly departed shall go to heaven, regardless of how he or she lived his or her life on earth. In death, it is believed (or rather, relatives choose to believe) that all of one’s sins are swept away and forgiven. I doubt that this holds true to the Almighty Whose commandments are clearly stated in the Bible.
Have you noticed how glowingly the dead is spoken of over his coffin? No matter if he was a scourdrel in life, only the good memories are presented about him. That’s the Filipino way because we love our dead and mourn their passing. Or perhaps, in some cases, we love their being dead.
May they all rest in peace!
