A plate of ‘pancit’ and ‘sinukmani’

Like most Filipino families, we subscribe to the culture of leaving a lit candle outside the house during All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day. Beside the candle goes a plate of sinukmani and pancit. All of these are offered for the dead, our way of telling them that they are remembered.

But I often wondered: Is there something more behind such a practice?

I would usually tell my family that when I die, I want every part of my body fit to be donated to be given to those in need. The remaining parts should undergo cremation, the ashes to be disposed of then in the ocean or the mountains.

Giving away body parts for someone in need is, for me, more logical and useful than just saving my body for a worm’s banquet. Disposing the ashes, meanwhile, would save paying for a parcel of land to bury me in, or worrying about the jar full of my ashes in the corner of the house getting mistaken for something else (one can only imagine).

“Di na naman ako ’yun,” I told my family one time when we were talking about the subject. “Wala nang point.”

If I were to be a ghost to visit my family, I would not be at peace knowing that I had left them with funeral debt. If they could save both cost and effort, the better for me.

However, later on, I did realize that my practicality had taken over my empathy — that these practices are not really for the dead but for the living. The realization came with the passing of my grandmother early this year, which I consider my first real experience with the death of a loved one.

My grandmother had spent a week or two at the hospital. It was her second stroke. Her organs were also failing; consequently, she needed to undergo operations that her wornout body could no longer take without the risk of exacerbating her condition. My mother and her brothers eventually accepted that it was time to let Lola Mila be taken care of at home. When we learned about this, we neither objected nor asked why; we were aware of the reason behind the decision. So home Lola stayed, until she had to go.

The morning she left us, I went to work without saying goodbye to her. Somehow, I knew it was the day, but I decided not to say it. It might sound immature, but I clung to the thought that if I would not say goodbye, I could perhaps delay death’s imminent arrival, if not prevent it from happening. But it did happen. A few hours after I left home that Monday morning, my elder sister called to say that Lola Mila was gone.

After the call, I went home immediately and did not report for work for the rest of the week. At my grandmother’s wake, I kept a straight face for relatives visiting our house. Sitting beside my grandmother’s casket, I kept myself busy by either listening to visitors’ stories about my Lola, or typing on my laptop as I crammed papers due for submission and presentation the following week. The latter kept me occupied, even distracted from any emotional outburst. I never cried, not even on the day my Lola was buried.

But these days, finding a picture of her in my gallery, hearing a story mentioning her name, or stumbling upon the works I made about her triggers something in me, leaving me almost at the brink of crying, though always with tears never shed. Why I hold them back, I don’t know why, or perhaps just won’t admit.

The candles we light and leave to burn, the plate of  sinukmani and pancit we offer, the body we either burn or bury, and the tears we pour out or never shed, are our ways of grieving. However long the passing has been, we can never really let go of the people we love. How can we? They go, and we are left to get by with our lives with the hole they have left in us.

I still prefer the donation and cremation idea for myself when I die. But if my family decides to pursue other courses of action, they have my permission, too. Apart from the fact that I would not be able to stop them in any way, I know now how it is to grieve for and bury a loved one. I think I have gained the capacity to understand and respect people’s individual ways of grieving and remembering, may they be in the form of burning candles, or offering a plate of  pancit  and sinukmani.

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Kevin A. Amante, 25, works at the Laguna State Polytechnic University.