I was at a funeral once. This was the funeral of my former partner. All our common friends were there, my close friends and our old colleagues. I have really not much experience with funerals; this was the second one in my adult life that I have ever been to aside from my grandmother’s nearly a year ago at the time this happened. Before then, what I remember from funerals is mostly about me and my cousins and young uncles and aunts hiding away in the second floor of the family house in Manila chasing dust bunnies and playing hide and seek whilst trying not to make noise to garner attention from our parents.
So, there I was, sitting with my best friend beside me. I was sad. We were sad. Her parents, who’ve lost their beloved daughter, even more so undoubtedly. At some point in the night while we were talking about our old memories with the deceased, I was offered something to drink by one of my ex’s younger sisters. It was at this moment, that my feeling of gratitude and my subconscious urge to express that feeling brought me into an awkward position with our old classmates sitting with me at the table.
I had said thank you. There was nothing else said, at least until the sister left leaving me with the bottle of water and an exchange of glances amongst my friends.
“You’re not supposed to say thank you, it’s a funeral.”
But she gave me something, am I not supposed to say thank you?
“Well yes, under normal circumstances but this is a funeral you see. People are sad and it’s taboo to say thank you as it would be “cheerful” or “happy” so to say”, Mariel said. She was my ex’s best friend and someone I was very close to as well. “I don’t know, I don’t quite get it as well but yeah.”
This confused me quite a bit, but I also understood what she meant although to me the idea was still alien. To me, I was thanking the kind gesture, not the death or ill fate that the deceased suffered although it was inexcusable still. But this all makes sense because of what we call culture.
Culture is just a set of values, practices and beliefs that a group of people share. It is how people live and have lived. What we find acceptable could be quite the opposite for some people, and vice versa. Culture separates “us” from “them”; a set of rules and classifications that makes you a member (or not).
Why and how do we have culture? There’s not much reason behind it except that it’s the character of a certain group of people. When you think of Muslims you think of hijabs and strict abstinence from vices. When you hear the word “liberty” and “independence” you often think of the United States of America, or the West and the thought of a democratic society. Cultures and subcultures are formed when people come together. It is the smile in your face when you greet an old friend, it is the greeting you give to your friend, and it is the words you speak. The concept of culture goes hand in hand with speech, language, education and philosophy. The very language this essay is written in, the ideas and presuppositions present in this essay, in the author’s and reader’s mind is a cultural function. Culture is as old as humanity, and it started when the first few people bumped into each other and decided to come together.
I like to think I’m open minded and culturally and emotionally sensitive, but often I’m proven wrong. That night I learned a lesson in prudence. It was lucky for me that only my friends had heard what I said. In my heart I celebrated the life of a person I once knew although I was still stricken, and I supposed that life is too short (as evidenced by her passing) to wallow in sadness and grief at the death of the people we love, once loved and will care for. I believe that while we live, we should make an effort to express the value that the people around us hold in our lives. There is no shortage of suffering and of pain to come today and tomorrow. Spend instead every waking moment smiling and live life understanding that death smiles at us all and all we can do is smile back. It is death that spares us from many of the troubles that nature imparts upon us in life.
Perhaps it is the regret of not having done or said enough for the departed that drives all men to grief and depression. I think that to wish that people be spared their natural ending is injustice and pointless. I had watched my bedridden grandmother for years, and I had watched her in a vegetative state in her last few weeks. I felt helpless watching her knowing if she survived the stroke that put her in such state would be heartbreaking for her and for my grandfather to live worse off than before. Would it be kind to have wished for her to live longer in that state?
For me, it was more painful to have lost the people I cared for while they were still alive. To be an outsider; out of the group, out of the culture even though I’m not quite in the group nor out of it as I would assume almost all people are. People aren’t robots who just know all the rules and are one thing or another. People are grey. People’s beliefs are grey areas. That’s why saying thank you is fine, but not in a funeral; at least not in that funeral at Buenavista 3, General Trias City, Cavite.
So, I learned to be more careful. It’s better to hold off saying anything than to have said the wrong thing; words vanish into thin air. But would I have left that place a little wiser had I not made that mistake? Is it not from trial and error that we learn, and have something to share with other people to form social bonds? You be the judge.
Just don’t say “Buhay pa” as a response to “How are you?” when you’re in a funeral. Under normal circumstances that’s acceptable but for obvious reasons that’s not something to say, and that’s a story for another time.
