A 'living' funeral

We tell the people who matter most to us that we love them and we tell them of our love for them now.

- BÜM D. TENORIO, JR.

Not when they are gone. Not when they cannot hear our sweet words anymore. This is the essence of “A living funeral,” an activity I did in my Purposive Communication class some time ago at St. Vincent College of Cabuyao. (I first learned about it in my Occasional Speeches class in UP Los Bafios from the late Dean Edelwina Legaspi in 1989. Then I experienced it again when I attended a lecture of healing priest Fr. Corsie Legaspi in the mid-“90s in Binakayan, Cavite.)

Death, like life, is a celebration, I told my class. So, we celebrated “A living funeral,” the face-to-face final exam for my students held at the school’s open court. The activity had the students delivering their eulogies for their loved ones — even if they were still alive. I explained to the class that often the regret of the living is not being able to show or verbalize their love for their loved ones when they were still alive.

The shock value for this particular class included a real coffin with lights, curtains, candles and flowers on top of the casket. The pallbearers from San Ramon Funeral Homes, whose owners agreed to lend me and the school the needed elements for a funeral scene, arrived at SVCC early in the morning. (You can just imagine the astonishment in the eyes of those who were not part of our class.)

“Life and death are the same. They ought to be celebrated. In between those moments are happiness and sorrow, hope and longing, start and pause, triumphs and tribulations, ups and downs, giggles and tears. In the end, it is what is in between life and death that matters the most,” I told the class, whose members came in white and black.