Death Without Ceremony

"The ethics of attending to the dying by device are still being written. Do you mute something like that if you can?"

I listened as he gasped for breath, waiting for someone to reclaim the phone. My uncle’s mouth was bruised and bleeding, his body dressed in a white gown with a blue motif that reminded me of chrysanthemums. I wanted to leave the chat but it felt like desecration. The ethics of attending to the dying by device are still being written. Do you mute something like that if you can?

My uncle spent his last night in the hospital. Like thousands of others, he died away from family, the tearful faces of loved ones replaced by a flurry of isolation gowns, anonymous mask-clad faces basked in fluorescent lighting. His final moments are left to my imagination: Were his eyes open? Did he seem scared or at peace? Was someone holding his hand?

I worry about my grandmother, drawing comfort from the potted plants that friends are leaving on her porch—rosemary, for remembrance. She went from living with her parents and eight siblings to starting a family with just as many children. Most of them are living abroad now, and one of her sons has passed away. For the first time in her life, she is alone, in a house full of orchids.

Funeral rites are as old as human culture itself. They provide a safe and structured space for shared remembrance. For survivors of the deceased, they act as a gate between the old and new. In a time when days blend together and the future is uncertain, this demarcation becomes especially difficult to make.

Undertaking is recession-proof, but the pandemic has made every new body feel like a threat. How many hands touched it? Was it coughed on? How long will those hypothetical droplets linger? The cremator we hired had to spray everything he planned to touch with disinfectant.

Prior to the pandemic, my grandmother found solace in knowing that the deceased's family would have another chance to say goodbye at a funeral home. Now, she said, “strangers will throw a sheet over them, walk out the door with someone’s loved one, and take them away forever.”

So we did the next best thing: a group chat to share memories, stories, and pictures. On Twitter, I wrote how my uncle carried a lucky purple rock I’d given him for decades; that he’d recorded every species of bird he ever saw, starting with a red-winged blackbird at Nueva Ecija when he was 14; that he’d stopped smoking at the age of 49.

"To those who are still grieving, be gentle with yourselves. Grief is nonlinear, it waxes and wanes, sometimes light and sometimes heavy."

Under normal circumstances, I would have said this in front of a packed church. For the first time in my life, I am grateful for technology. For these stories give substance to his existence and prevent it from evaporating into weightlessness. COVID-19 has normalized the presence of death and altered our lives so drastically that the reality of his absence feels less palpable each day, dulled by a sea of tragedies.

Everything is put on hold: weddings, graduations, and even grief. But there is a strange comfort in this shared grief, in the knowledge that millions of others worldwide are experiencing the same emotions despite not speaking the same language.

In a time when our lives are saturated with projections and exponential graphs, I encourage you to listen to individual stories, to welcome remembrance and narratives that help us make sense of our experience. To those who are grieving, be gentle with yourselves. Grief is nonlinear, it waxes and wanes, sometimes light and sometimes heavy.

Embrace the altered trajectories, the detours, and the unexpected. Place more weight on the little things: rekindling an old friendship, a meal shared with family, the glowing embrace of the sunset, the rustle of a new page turning. Life is not on hold.