Around the same month last year, I had the worthy opportunity of fulfilling a family obligation: unearthing the bone remains of my long late parents in the province. Tatay died in 1995, and Nanay in 2010. I and wife Malou, along with my younger sister, have to trek to the province to oversee the immediate exhumation of the bone remains of my parents and have them transferred to a Catholic Ossuary in nearby Palo, hometown of my father.
A day after we arrived, we found ourselves right at the gravesite of my parents – the tomb of nanay on top of tatay’s – to witness the exhumation, with our cellphone videos on hand.
At first, I felt queasy being at my father’s gravesite, inducing a painful memory on my part way back in 1995 when he died and I missed his wake and burial that I had to content myself belatedly grieving at his gravesite.
Now, the exhumation process started, with three gravediggers present. First was nanay’s tomb. Baring it open, I saw nanay’s decomposed remains, with her burial clothes. Her hair still partly intact, and her teeth likewise, the gravedigger started segregating the bones – from her feet, to her body part, and up to her skull – and placed them into a black plastic bag.
Then followed tatay’s exhumation, same process. I noticed he wore his veteran’s khaki unform (makes credence to the truth that I was absent during his wake and burial). What also caught my attention was his quite impressive skull – its conspicuous size, and it seemed neat and regal.
Life Is Short, Indeed
Yes, witnessing my late parents’ exhumation was not only funereal, but quite eerie and uncanny as well. But beholding the dusty remains and bones of tatay and nanay brings me one stark realization: LIFE IS FRAIL, FRAGILE, and SHORT!
My late parents’ DUSTS and BONES remind me – albeit poignant – not only of our humble, dusty beginning but also of the “insignificance” or “nothingness” of our bodily life. Yes, more than their dusts and bones, tatay and nanay are “significant” in the memory of us, their children. But to the vast others in this planet, they are but nothing and insignificant (except, no doubt, for saints and heroes).
There’s a grain of truth, perhaps to Shakespeare’s lines: “Tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day; to the last syllable of recorded time; the way to dusty death…life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage…and then is heard no more.”
This brings home the point: IT IS NOT THE NUMBER OF YEARS WE ADD TO OUR LIFE, BUT OF LIFE TO OUR YEARS; OUR LIFE IS NOT MEASURED BY THE NUMBER OF BREATHS WE TAKE, BUT BY THE MOMENTS THAT TAKE OUR BREATH AWAY.
What Really Matters
Profoundly so, the frailty and fragility of life behooves us to not just strive for success, but for significance in what we do; and to build relationships that create lasting and beautiful memories.
The shortness of life induces us to – if I were to paraphrase the last line in the poem of William Arthur Ward, “Before You” – at the very least, LIVE BEFORE WE DIE or let every moment of our life journey count.
After all, at our life’s end, what really matters most is not what we bought, but what we built; not what we got, but what we gave; not our social status, but our character; not our success, but our significance; not how much we have acquired or achieved, but how much we have loved.
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