An honest-to-goodness wake

Apparently, there is no “official guide” on how to conduct a funeral service or wake. There are a ton of verses, quotes and popular stories you can use at a funeral but nothing specific on the conduct or hosting of a “lamay” or wake.

It has been almost a decade since I was directly involved or part of a wake or “lamay” for a family member, but recently someone who has been closer than a brother, my partner in D.I.Y projects, our caretaker, recently died from intestinal cancer.

And so, we found ourselves arranging the funeral services and wake for Narding. This took some doing because two of his children are OFWs and most of his siblings are based in Aklan or Nueva Ecija, while the wake was held in Lipa, Batangas.

Rich or poor, there will be no stopping family members from coming home, whether it is by land, air or sea. The son working in Ireland managed to avail of a bereavement leave of seven days, while a daughter managed to squeeze four days off even if her contract in Japan forbade unscheduled leaves.

For context, imagine not knowing if your plane can or will take off after a drone hit the runway at Dubai airport? Arriving at 2 a.m. in NAIA and taking JoyRide to Lipa City at midnight took some orchestrating skills on my wife’s part.

As I write this column, we are monitoring the daughter’s flight from Japan and trip via JoyRide to Lipa, while trying to keep it a surprise for her grieving mother. That all these happened shows God is good.

What mattered was to see and say goodbye to their beloved father rather than stare at a stone cold urn full of ashes and a photo picked from a familiar event. To see them hugging in pain and in joy makes it all worth it.

Here in the province, the wakes are still generally held at home, except by more affluent families who rent chapels or churches, while the poorer families rely on their barangay to lend the multipurpose hall or a table, chairs and tarpaulin for roadside wakes.

Without doubt, the funeral costs for the service, rent of casket and cremation in the province are way more affordable and practical, since they are usually only half the price of Metro Manila.

If in Metro Manila you might say that flowers are optional, out in the province, sending wreaths is not as popular or automatic. Given the practical nature of people in the provinces, they are better off receiving monetary assistance than being stuck with truckloads of wreaths.

The absence of flowers certainly kept things open and without obstruction. Not to mention less work having to remove all the tags from the wreaths or listing down names to thank later and finding someone to dispose of the flowers.

Besides which, the money is better spent to cover funeral expenses, kilo upon kilo of coffee and sugar offered, as well as the lunch and dinner serving of freshly cooked food.

In most wakes I’ve observed in Metro Manila, feeding guests becomes a food and beverage function passed on to executive assistants to deal with caterers and venue managers.

While all that is hassle free or practical, it places a financial burden on the bereaved. Here in the province, the women in the family troop to the public market at five in the morning, buy all the needed ingredients and spend the rest of the morning preparing food and ready to cook ingredients for lunch or dinner. It is all a family affair.

Everything here is about family. Family ties, stories, gratitude, struggles and remembrance. The only other time I ever gave a eulogy was for my Dad Louie Beltran at the UP Chapel in 1994.

I barely remember what I said back then, only inviting those in attendance to reflect on my father’s character as a public figure and journalist by singing “My Way.” My first “solo concert” was horrible by most accounts, but effort counts, right?

This time around, I simply “talked” about how all the men at the wake (who all knew Narding intimately) could remember him or “Pamarisan niyo” for being a model father, brother, husband, a loyal friend and a man who dedicated his later life to our Lord Jesus Christ.

In spite of the sadness, there was beauty in such an intimate gathering of mostly family members and neighbors. The stories and praise were sincere and heartfelt. The guests who came were people whose lives were touched by Narding, directly and regularly.

We may have been 30 at most, but we were somehow connected, knitted into the life of a generous man, generous with his time, his concern, his skills and even his limited hard earned money.

There were no beso-beso or tight hugs, except for immediate family members. The rest of us leaned on each other, sitting on wobbly plastic stools or benches, shook or squeezed hands and waved when someone left.

We didn’t have to embrace like there was no tomorrow, because that was exactly what we all looked forward to, tomorrow where “we may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of our lives, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple” (Psalm 27:4).

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