Candles for the dead, flowers for the living
Please omit the flowers, and I may hasten to add, omit the flowery words in the eulogy too. Focus on the real meaning of the day. Skip all the pretensions. Only politicians lie even to the dead.
The ultimate hypocrisy of man is often expressed in eulogies and necrological orations. Speakers often wax eloquence in extolling the virtues of a departed associate, relative, or colleague. They did this for the late senator Nene Pimentel just a few days ago. They did this to Marcos, Ninoy, Cory, and to all significant men and women who died. The same persons who persecuted, hurt, and insulted the man would be the same characters who would praise him to high heavens when the person is cold and dead inside the casket. Only a few would say the truth during funerals, like what Marc Anthony did in his eulogy for his friend Julius Caesar who was murdered with treachery by friends like Brutus and Cassius.
The same hypocrisy is manifested by the tons and tons of flowers sent to the dead man's house or the funeral parlor. Politicians, businessmen, and influence-peddlers who even hardly knew the deceased would send expensive arrangements of orchids, anthoriums, and tulips imported from the Netherlands. They are nothing but for “ad ostentationem,” for the show of it. In Tagalog, “pakitang tao”. In Bisaya, “pagpaka-aron ingnon”. Hypocrisy, showing off and merely intending to impress people rather than express true sympathy to the bereaved. Many send flowers for business and for publicity, to display wealth or power, to exasperate enemies and rivals, and to butter up family members from whom favors are being asked or expected.
I don't mind candles, let them be burned till the day and the night is over. But flowers are for the living to appreciate not to decorate the tombs of people who never saw a petal when they were still alive and kicking. Flowers are big business on All Souls Day and on Valentine’s Day. It's funny that both love and death are celebrated with blooms and blossoms of fresh flowers, there must be some unexplained and, if you will, some insidious connections between dying and being in love. Or, are flowers the way for the living to celebrate because the deceased had finally rested in peace? The link between flowers and death is a contradiction, rather than a simulation.
I heard it said that somebody wrote a book entitled “Send the Flowers to Me Now.” It was an admonition to express affection while the object of that emotion is still alive. It is an injunction against post-mortem expression of care, attention and why not, love. And so, why not send those flowers to the mother or father who is lonely and sick? Why not send the flowers to the bored wife who has never heard a word of appreciation from a neglectful husband. Why not send those beautiful bundles of roses to a sister whom you have not talked to, much less visited for the last ten years? Why wait for death to come before those arrangements are sent?
Man has many forms of falsehoods and insincerity but nothing can surpass this one being done today and tomorrow. Sending flowers to the dead is the ultimate hypocrisy. The only socially redeeming value of this pretentious showing off is that flower farmers do make a little money and the middlemen make even much more. It keeps the local economy going. But it has nothing to do with being authentic or genuine.
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