The series of deaths among relatives and friends should have made us experts in expressing our griefs. We never develop a skill in grieving but, with people gone because of the virus, we must be at ease already with writing down phrases fit for our loved ones or respected ones who, for example, get admitted today and expire after an hour.
I, too, have my share of losses and grieving. I respond to death by rushing to my favorite or favored shrine (a term that, I suppose, will never be encouraged by theologians) and schedule a Mass for the repose of a soul.
During the pandemic, my trip to the said shrine has become a regular occurrence. That regularity has engendered in me a new knowledge about how corporeal is my spirituality—a condition that I find not only common but regular and, given how it is practiced, accepted among many fellow Catholics.
In my first trip to the shrine to arrange for a Mass in this Diseased Age, I felt tentative about the obligation. In the said shrine a volunteer usually stays near its main door. But seeing an elderly lady surrounded by thick plastic was disconcerting. Will I be the asymptomatic one and be the harbinger of affliction to her?
Quantifying a request for a Mass can be embarrassing. But is it proper to ask the specific amount to be given to the institutional Church so that one’s prayer for a beloved to have eternal peace can be accommodated? And so I feel my way through the procedure and ascertain the fee to be given.
Next, I take photos of the shrine or the Church where the Mass is going to take place. Then I post these photos online. These photos are not receipts but rather a presence and not a promise.
Which brings me to my own catechism. The Mass for the Dead is not really for the Dead. I do not believe my P100 donation will matter in Heaven. That Mass, which is about love and respect for the person who has gone on, is for those who are left behind. The rites serve as our link to the bereaved. In the impossibility of being there in person with the mother, siblings, or children of the Dead Person, we console them with our body and not with our soul.
With the Mass offering comes the trickier question of how to pay tribute online. How do we offer praises and remembrances?
As with anything decent, never overdo sympathies.
Take note: if there is already a lighted candle, the light of which is being followed by hundreds of sympathizers, DO NOT light another candle, be it of the virtual type.
Observe: if there is a long trail of prayers and condolences and there is no mention of the particularities of the Dead Person, do not affix a prayer only to ask later the vulgar question, who died please?
Photos are gems when sited online. If you are the best friend of the Dead, find a solo picture of this your friend. Avoid posting a photo with you included. Remember, on the day of one’s Death, the Dead is the leading character, the subject matter, the topic sentence.
Speaking of topic sentence, how do we pay homage to a dead person?
If you were lucky to have a Theology professor whose standard was to have answers to his quiz that would not go beyond a sentence, then you are on your way to becoming a tribute master. We have guides and aphorisms that can light our way when we are the kind of a writer friend who can darken a farewell with lengthy references couched in convoluted and compound sentences.
In brevity there is wit. Shakespeare. Brevity is a great charm of eloquence. Cicero.
Convinced now that a short paragraph is more than enough to express our love, then we collect ourselves, focus on the person we are remembering, scribble his or her name unseen on space, and drop all the personal pronouns and personal references. Check our impulses if we are starting the paragraph with “I” and, with the rage of the Old Testament Prophet, strike it out.
As with excellent essays that eschew motherhood statements, skip the goodness and brilliance of the Dead. Remember that oft-quoted statement how “the good is oft-interred with their bones”? All Dead Persons are Good Persons. Go to your specific, small memories of days with him. Was he a gourmet? Did he care if the hotel had a lovely lobby? Was he happy with a box of chocolate?
Do not be bothered about your prayers failing. Prayers do not fail. Keep this in your heart: the prayers that you utter, the goodness that now you speak, are really more about you, about us who are left here to fend for ourselves, to be alive and to be sorrowful at the same time because, till the day the tributes are about us, we are here in the world where attachment leads to suffering, succumbing to a humanity threatened but breathing, with lots of laws on and flaws in happiness.
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