Jolly Morbidity

So can anyone tell me why this year there's an overabundance of huge cha-cha-ing Santa Clauses in restaurants, in the middle of malls, and even in (ironically enough) Sports House? Does it have anything to do with the (supposedly successfully hurdled) fiscal crisis, and our need for symbols of affluence and (Western) generosity? Or is it simply the novel idea of one manufacturer who decided to supply bigger companies with affordable but moving (as in mobile) Christmas decorations?

Whatever the reason, I get mildly disturbed when I see the hyper-jolly, sometimes life-size Santas moving their hands up and down like Biomen mecha-clones (or mecha-gaigons?) in sinister slow motion.

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My ex-boyfriend's brother, who eventually became the best man at my brother's wedding, just had a baby, who died last Friday. Last night, we went to the wake of one-day-old Aaron Luke (nicknamed Zack).

Elmo asked me how the dynamic of a wake changes when it's that of an infant. Because instead of commemorating a life, people are mourning the end of a possibility. And it's true. Last year I attended four wakes (Lola Evy's, Lolo Molina's, Manang Tilde's, Jowell's mom's)---all of which were rather celebratory, overflowing with food, with people chatting lightheartedly, as we Pinoys tend to do even in the direst situations.

But the scene in one of the smaller box-like rooms at Loyola Guadalupe last night seemed tense, almost surreal. For one thing, when we arrived, neither the coffin nor the immediate family (save for the parents' three-year-old daughter) were there. Friends and relatives crammed on three church benches were faced with a white wall and an empty white table, with no food, flowers, or forms of distraction. The conversations I overheard were halting, and full of questions. Where were they? How long should we wait? Why did the baby die? The woman beside me, who was seven months pregnant, caressed her tummy. An hour later, the preacher announced the family would be delayed because the baby's grandfather had been rushed to St. Luke's and was now in the ICU. Then he handed around small photocopied sheets of paper, which contained the diagram of a heart and the following text:

Hypoplastic Left-Heart Syndrome. A serious and usually fatal form of congenital heart disease that affects about one to two newborn babies in every 10,000 live births. The baby is born with a poorly formed left ventricle, the aorta is malformed and blood can only reach it via the ductus arteriosus. At birth the baby may seem healthy, but within a day or two the ductus arteriosus closes off and the baby collapses, becoming pale and breathless. There is no effective surgical treatment for the condition and most affected babies die within a week.

Two : ten thousand.

Minutes later, the parents arrived, and the service started. The preacher said, "I am no stranger to death," and proceeded to enumerate people he knew who had died this year. Thankfully, somewhere in his spiel, he addressed the gravity of the situation. He said there are three things we don't know: 1) why this baby was taken away; 2) what his talents and abilities would have been; and 3) what impact he would have had on the world. But that there are many other things we do know: that he was planned for not just by his parents but by God; that he is now in the arms of God in heaven; that he was and will always be loved by his entire family and God.

Earlier that afternoon I was telling someone that sometimes I wish I still believed in a God. Because I envy the sense of comfort faith used to bring, because I don't want randomness to be the only option, because sometimes I still want to invest the explanation in someone, who may be an illusion or just another construct.

But I do believe that some experiences need the sacredness of ceremony. If a religious wake helps people acknowledge their loss, provides a proper venue for mourning, and gives them strength to move on, then it can't be anything but good.

* * *
My brother stayed over until long past midnight, when the baby was cremated. He told me this over lunch today at 1:30.

Fact: it takes four hours for an adult man to be fully cremated.

Fact: it takes less than one hour for an infant to be cremated.

When it was over, the man handed a white letter envelope to the parents. Inside was a small plastic bag that contained the infant's ashes.

The infant's ashes fit in a white letter envelope.