Nine Days

I've always had this fondness for religious rituals. I don't love them but I am fond of them. I have this keen capacity to observe baptisms, weddings, blessings, the Mass and rites of passage of whatever faith culture. I know that its a very intrusive activity on my part that almost borders voyeurism. It is probably the closeted romantic in me that makes me fond of these ceremonies. Its not the religiosity of the ritual that appeals to me but its the significance. I have not practiced Catholicism in many years and I haven't truly participated in a Eucharistic celebration (aka the Mass), yet I am always at awe when I witness people gather to pray to celebrate life, death and the divine.



About two Saturdays ago, I had to go to another city to attend the ninth day novena for my sister's death. Filipino's call it Pasiyam which literally means “nine”. It was the novena for the dead. The Catholic Christian Tradition holds the novena as a devotion that consists of prayer said on nine successive days^Wikipedia, asking to obtain special graces and favors.  In the case of the novena for the dead, the congregation prays for the departed's soul for nine consecutive days in order for the soul to safely pass through the afterlife.



I arrived late because of the traffic. If truth be told, I could have gone earlier but I really wasn't keen on meeting distant relatives and neighbors. I could've missed the whole thing, but I had to do it for my family and my sister. So I arrived late and they already praying (in Filipino). They were all in the living room facing the makeshift altar that my mother made for my sister which was beside the door. They all saw me come in in my tank top and shorts and flip flops. I paid the necessary respects to the elders present by slightly bowing and then placing my forehead to the back of their hands. We call the act pagmamano in Filipino. I started with my parents, my uncles and aunts and the old neighbors who were attending the novena.



I never liked the custom because that meant one has to do it even if one doesn't like the person. I was told it was a sign of humility and of respect to elders. I've always held that humility had to be genuine and that respect must always be earned. The Bible says that Pride is a sin and perhaps it is. Then again, the Bible was edited and rewritten so many times by so many old men with nothing to do but intellectually masturbate everything that I would beg to differ. I think if there ever is a God, that God would tell us to value pride because pride and humility are both one and the same in smell and taste. Its like drinking milk – no matter what the carton is, its still white and it still tastes like milk.



I did it anyway. It was part of the ritual after all. And after I did my part, I placed myself in the farthest corner of the room where I can be nondescript and anonymous and I watched them. I watched each person facing the altar and I observed. All of them were intently focused on the prayer mouthing the litanies like it was their last day on earth. Even the two year olds were praying. Even my brother was praying. I looked at each of their faces and saw a certain sense of calmness as they mouthed the words. Most of them knew my sister but they never really knew her. I could actually count the people in the room who knew Carmen. Yet all of them were intently praying for her like she was their very daughter, sister and friend. I guess this is a very Filipino way of dealing with death. When somebody dies, it is not just the immediate family who grieves, but a community. I've always held that death is something really personal, that you alone will experience your own death and you can never share that experience with others. Dying, for me, is the most selfish and sacred human experience a person can ever have. For Filipinos however (and perhaps for the rest of humanity), the loss needs to be shared by the ones left behind. I've never understood the concept, but somehow it works for the many of us.



I am not a religious person and I make no apologies for being such.  However, seeing the people all huddled up in one corner of our living room in our house in Caloocan, I was moved. I wasn't moved to pray like they did. I was moved to reflect about the moment. I realized how much I appreciated these people. My family needed consolation, some sort of don't-worry-everything-will-be-alright-she's-in-a-better-place-now kind of consolation. It wasn't the fact that they were praying for her, my sister that moved me but it was the fact that they were praying with my family who was grieving for a daughter, a sister, an aunt and a mother. It's comforting to know that you are not grieving alone. Granted that some of them were there for the free lunch buffet but still, it moves me to see that my family share their grief with people. There was no crying in the room. After the novena, everybody was served with lunch. The food was great. My aunt volunteered to cook. And to think that she and my mother were mortal enemies not so many eons ago. I was catching up with my cousins and telling them how beautiful their children were. Children were playing outside. People were laughing at silly sex jokes. Everybody was catching up with each other exchanging phone numbers. The whole scene in our house in Caloocan was warm and comforting. I looked around and it was so different from the scene a few minutes before. Then I placed my vision at the corner by the door where my mother made a makeshift altar for my departed sister. My mother placed flowers by her portrait. The picture was really beautiful. She was all bitchy and all sultry in the photo.  A fitting honor for my sister.



One thing I realized is that my family's experience of the death of my sister really wasn't about her dying. It was about my family being left behind and trying to move forward. Grief is the only way for the ones left behind to manifest the phenomenon of death. For my sister, it was about dying and leaving and passing away. She died. We didn't. We can only grieve. I shall never know her experience of death and dying because it was hers and hers alone. Someday I will, hopefully not soon, but I look forward to the experience. I just hope I have a pen and paper when that happens.