How my dad helped me overcome my fear of the dead

MANILA, Philippines - I used to be scared of wakes. I remember the fear coffins brought into my young mind: The eerie lights; the pungent smell of flowers; and the casket jarringly displayed. That fear made me stay away from coffins, let alone view the dead body inside.

But that was from another lifetime. Now, whenever I attend a wake, I make sure to come near the casket and say a little prayer for the deceased. I don’t sense the stalking presence of death in wakes anymore, but a simple celebration of life.

The cruel part of this understanding, however, is that it came as a result of losing someone dear to me — my father.

When I was young, I always had that imagination that if I viewed a dead body during wakes, it would open its eyes, growl menacingly, become a zombie and haunt me, a scene straight out of horror movies. But during my father’s wake, I couldn’t imagine his cadaver to do any of that. My memories of him prove otherwise.

My father, Ricardo Marquez, was never the physical discipliner. I don’t recall my father seriously spanking any of his seven children. He’d give us kurots (pinch) though, but only as a form of lambing. Even when I was in my rebellious stage, he’d reprimand me for my bad behavior but he never physically hit me. So it was really hard to imagine him, lifeless in his coffin, to inflict physical pain on me.

In fact, even if he could, he would not choose to talk. Rather, he’d sing. Music was a big part of his personality that in our humble home in Atimonan, Quezon, his singing could be heard on all four corners. I’d wake up to hear him singing his usual comical folk songs, and at night, he hushed us to sleep with his kundimans. And like Levi Celerio, he, too, could make music by using leaves. He charmed my mother, Lolita Marquez, with his songs, from their courtship to their almost 40 years of marriage.

If my father’s cadaver did become a zombie, I’d imagine him to be a gentle zombie.

As the youngest of seven, most of my memories of him were of his retiring years, times when he was the fat, jolly, old and balding man. But at his prime, he was a skilled copra farmer. And for what he lacked in formal education — he only finished first year of high school — he made up for it with his vast knowledge of nature and jungle habitat. He could predict the weather by just listening to the chirps of the birds. He could name types of trees and plants and in what seasons they flourished, what were poisonous and what were safe to eat. Strong as he was back then, he was still a soft-hearted person who never forgot to bring back pasalubong to his seven children — Rhodora, Milnaluz, Laarni, Riezalyn, Ian, Rhomila and me.

And so now, whenever I go to wakes and funerals, I no longer have the fear I used to have. I see now that the dead body is not a menacing creature I imagined it to be; instead, he was a father to someone, a mother, a brother or a sister. Devoid of life the body may be, it still possesses the same hand that caressed, the same lips that spoke love, and the same eyes that brought affection.

Death, indeed, has the power to sow fear. But so does love. And the love my father gave me was powerful enough for me to overcome my fear.