Growing up in a funeral parlor
By Arlene Paredes
Published on Page C4 of the November 1, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
I GREW up in a house attached to a funeral parlor. My elementary classmates knew me as Arlene-Paredes-Funeral-Homes. (Now that I’m writing it, I can actually laugh about it. But back then, it surely wasn’t funny!)
What most people in our little town know is that I was the child who grew up in a sari-sari store standing next to a funeral parlor. What they didn’t know, and perhaps what’s difficult to believe, is that it was fun for me (only because I was curious and playful) and the experience had so much to do with the way I look at death today.
Because when I was growing up, every day was All Souls’ Day, and I wanted to drive a funeral car. The staff of HBO’s “Six Feet Under” must’ve talked to people who had the same childhood as mine. A garage of funeral cars used to be my playground.
Once, when one funeral car was unlocked and there was no one around, I hopped in and pretended I was driving it. Of course the car didn’t move; but I do remember having fun.
It’s both creepy and amusing now that I didn’t even bother then about the fact that the car actually carried coffins and human corpses almost every day. No, I wasn’t exactly being brave. I was just being a playful kid. After all, I was only six or seven at that. But if anyone would dare me to do the same thing now, I would definitely think twice. To be honest, I’d probably chicken out.
Must-have item
My familiarity with the coffins I saw daily must’ve bred a certain level of comfort in me, such that one coffin became a must-have item. Yes, there was a time when I actually chose a cute little coffin for myself. What happened after I announced a coffin preference was a form of education for me. I learned what not to do so as not to get into trouble.
The lesson started one morning, when my mother had just arrived from the market. I welcomed her with a gleeful announcement: There was a very cute small coffin on display, and I could fit in there!
My mother was just coming in through the display room. I pointed to the cute coffin, but was not prepared for her response. She slapped my tiny arm!
I shouldn’t make fun of fitting inside something like that, my mother yelled. I just invited Death to our door, she said. Naturally, I didn’t understand her reaction. But I was bound to see her point.
Not long after that day, I got very sick. It was the first time that I saw fear in my mother’s usually fierce eyes. She said I suffered from convulsions, which I don’t remember now. But from then on, my mother would always remind me of that stupid thing I did that almost cost me my life.
How can you take away superstition from death and dying? I guess you can’t. Because when it comes to preserving your life, you’re not supposed to take any chances.
There were early mornings when I woke up to the sound of people sobbing—families wanting to get a funeral service for their loved one. There were late nights, too, when I heard gentle knocking on our door, with voices of women weeping in the background. They too, needed funeral services. A funeral parlor is a 24/7 business. You can never tell anyone to “please come back later.”
Death happens anytime, I realized early in life. It can come in the morning, or midnight, or afternoon. Death also comes as a result of many things: murder, accident, nightmare, long illness, old age. I thought I’d heard all the stories back then.
Whenever there was a bereaved family in the funeral parlor, I’d immediately ask my father, “Ano’ng ikinamatay?” (What’s the cause of death?) Sometimes, my father would try to make light of it. Yet, even as he would say, “Eh nakalimutang huminga” (He forgot to breathe), his eyes would betray him and reveal his sympathies for the family.
Dressing up the dead
It was always clear to me that he never got used to seeing families crying for their dead. And it was much more difficult when the family was a close relative.
The film “Masahista (directed by Brillante Mendoza)” showed portions of how embalming is done and how the dead gets dressed up after the procedure. I must say, everything in “Masahista’s” funeral parlor scenes was plausible. Although the whole procedure is creepy, the embalmer is not a sinister or weird guy. He’s just a regular person doing something scary. (No one would allow me to watch the embalming before, but I was curious and I had my ways.)
The funeral parlor’s garage was a form of shortcut to my sister’s house, so I passed through that garage frequently, and alone. I was convinced I was brave. But I soon realized I was wrong, because I just couldn’t be found alone with a stranger’s corpse!
One afternoon, when I was going home from my sister’s house, I was greeted by a sight I didn’t know how to handle. There was one unidentified corpse lying on the garage, with no one around. The people from the funeral parlor were in the middle of some discussion outside, so I had to half-run my way to our house. I made a mental note to pray that I wouldn’t be caught dead with a corpse in one room again.
I must note, too, that the first camera I ever handled was the one owned by the funeral parlor. I shot no hair-rising photos, and encountered no frightening ghosts, thank God.
I was already 16 when I left our house that stood beside a funeral parlor. Now, over 10 years later, I don’t think I can ever go through that experience again. A lot of things have already ceased to become familiar, and that means I no longer feel comfortable about standing amid coffins, let alone staring hard at them, or sitting inside funeral cars, or using a funeral parlor’s camera, or staying for over a minute in a garage for hearses.
But some things don’t change. For instance, I still look at death the way I learned to look at it in my childhood: It is that which happens to a person when it’s Time.
“Hanap-patay,” a pun on “hanapbuhay,” is often used to describe the funeral parlor business. Technically, however, no business looks for the dead; because businesses need people who are alive and can pay for them.
The funeral parlor doesn’t even have to work on the “hanap” part. Business comes to them. There’s one thing I know and can remember about the business: it is (literally) not for the fainthearted. (Inquirer link here.)
E-mail crypticmess@gmail.com
The newspaper version is somewhere in my files, though I don’t have the luxury of time to go through all my (ancient) papers.
