Two cultures, two ways of dying

Nov. 2 is an appropriate date for me to remember how people from two different cultures tend to pass away.

Fourteen years ago, working in a small public service team in Wollongong, Australia, our team leader Greg was aware that Ken, one of our members, suffered epileptic fits. But he knew what to do whenever a convulsion hit him and was thrashing around on the floor. Greg just made sure he could breathe freely and nothing was choking him.

One Monday, Ken did not turn up for work and Greg, sensing something was not quite right, walked over to his flat, 10 minutes away, with a few others from the team. There was no response to our knocks and shouts, so he decided to break in, which was a good thing because Ken’s last fit ended in his death. If Greg hadn’t broken in, if he had just gone about his business calmly, efficiently, impersonally, someone would have found Ken eventually; but Greg went that extra mile, so that at his funeral, the rest of the team could give a passing few words in eulogy. Ken was accorded the dignity of a proper, respectful sendoff.

In Australia today, many more people are living—and dying—alone. Sometimes, somebody notices mail piling up, or some of the old digger’s mates haven’t noticed him around lately. Sometimes no one notices and it can be many months—or years—before the deceased is finally discovered.

It is usually put down to “alienation,” a condition where everyone is so self-sufficient and comfortable and isolated and out-of-touch with their own—and others’—suffering that their passing goes unnoticed, because they have been unloved, unwanted and unknown in life, and so in death.

There’s a certain village in France where certain people have taken it upon themselves to give strangers a proper burial, giving life to the corporal work of mercy to “bury the dead.”

But I don’t think that condition of alienation obtains in the Philippines. God knows there are horrendous social, moral, economic and political problems, but dying alone is not one of them. Maybe that’s one reason that I would not ever use the term “Third World” in reference to this land.

In this respect, it’s a First World nation that remembers that it is indeed “a good and holy thing to pray for the dead.”

—WALTER PAUL KOMARNICKI,

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