A different way of death

By David Haldane

IT seemed more like a birthday than a funeral. 

Resting in a raised wooden coffin with arms folded and eyes closed, the corpse looked like the guest of honor awaiting her party surprise. She was wearing what must have been her finest white blouse. But instead of lighting candles on a cake, the other guests – mostly children – lay sprawled out before her engrossed in a serious game of cards.

We didn’t know these people. In fact, we had happened on their house while visiting relatives in Navotas City, a shabby port town just north of Metro Manila. Seeing the door open and the crowd inside, we had mistaken the place for a club and wandered in looking for drinks. 

I don’t remember how my camera got involved, but before long I was snapping pictures of the deceased’s husband and young daughter posing proudly by her corpse. Later we got the full story; the family had just enough money to buy a coffin, but not enough to bury the damn thing. So, they were holding what Americans might call an “open house,” soliciting donations from relatives and friends. After the picture-taking and cokes, we made a small donation and bid them adieu.

I was reminded of all this during last week’s All Souls’/All Saints’ Days during which, while some visited their dead relatives in cemeteries, my dear wife took a squad of her still very-much-alive relatives trick-or-treating in observance of the Western spook holiday, Halloween. While most Filipinos dressed in their Sunday best, in other words, my partially Americanized wife and her crew wore dark costumes depicting scary goblins and ghosts. For me, it underscored once again how different the Filipino view of death is compared to the way it is seen in the West. 

To be sure, this isn’t the first time the difference has struck me. I remember several other unlikely encounters with the Philippine version of death, including one in General Luna – the most famous town on Siargao Island – where we once came upon a restaurant that looked like it was open. Instead of entertaining customers, however, the owner stood against a far wall, welcoming well-wishers there to see her dead 12-year-old daughter laid out on chairs. A few years later when my wife’s aunt died in her home village of Caridad, we dropped by to drink rum with relatives as the old woman reposed amid flowers on the dining room table. 

What I noticed about these scenes was how public they were. In America, about the only time you see a corpse, if ever, is in a formal setting at a funeral parlor or, possibly, in church. And when people speak of death, it is only in hushed tones with somber whispers of condolence. 

In the Philippines, it’s different; death is part of life. Instead of hiding a corpse, Filipinos pose with it for pictures. And instead of whispering about it in pained tones of shame, they converse with their neighbors over beer.

It’s not hard to understand why. Filipinos, for the most part, are deeply religious, so perhaps it reflects their strong belief in an afterlife and the survival of the soul. In a larger context, it is undoubtedly indicative of the powerful influence here of Hispanic culture wherein death is often embraced and even celebrated, as in Mexico’s Day of the Dead. 

In the rural Philippines, I believe, poverty also plays a role, as does the relative dearth of emergency services, proximate healthcare, and institutionalized caregiving. I have spent most of my 70 years in the United States where I never actually witnessed someone die. My Filipino wife, on the other hand, has had an uncle expire in her arms after being shot by an anonymous intruder, witnessed a policeman assassinated in a bus depot and even been called upon to identify drowned relatives laid out in a gymnasium after their ferryboat sank between Siargao and Surigao. And all that by the time she was 24.

The country’s uncanny familiarity with death was driven home to me by another experience on that same trip to Navotas City. Sauntering around town, we found a cemetery with long-abandoned burial vaults stacked atop each other like broken toys. And living in their midst, as if in an exclusive condominium complex, an enclave of squatters went about their daily chores.

A young girl attended a Kool Aid stand selling refreshments among the graves. A group of boys played basketball in a makeshift court surrounded by tombs. And a smiling teenager proudly showed off his “room,” barely cognizant of the names inscribed in its floor.

So how have I processed all this? The truth is that I think it’s related to the way I feel about the Philippines and why I’ve chosen to make it my home. There’s a kind of wildness here, an unpredictability, a sense that anything can happen and often does. Kind of like I imagine it would have been living in America’s Old West. Ah, but here’s the irony; being surrounded by all this death somehow makes me feel more alive.