Peace to you on All Saints Day

LETTERS FROM THE AGNO

March L. Fianza

Cremation as a way in burying the dead is preferred for personal reasons. For one, the process disposes of the body faster than through traditional means. But this was opposed later by Christians who preferred to bury the dead. For one reason, Christian churches said cremation weakens the faith about the “resurrection of the body” after death. The belief is that what was taken from the earth has to be returned to the earth.

But even with the opposition, cremation was practiced in situations where there were simultaneous deaths occurring during wars, famine, and fear of diseases spreading from the corpses. We were not spared from this experience during the 1990 killer earthquake where thousands were killed instantly. So that the cremation process had to be done on hundreds of corpses that were burned all together at the Baguio public cemetery.

Not so long ago, there were few testimonial accounts about deceased family members whose remains were tied on chairs and raised above fires to be smoked. This process lasted until the body liquids of the deceased had dripped dry. The corpses were then bathed with herbs before these were preserved in carved out wooden coffins and inserted in cleavages of rocks on high mountains. This was last practiced in some parts of Mountain Province and by some families in Benguet.

This practice has changed. Indigenous communities in the Cordillera bury their departed relatives inside their family lots while the more modern Igorot chose to stick with what the new order required – burying the departed in communal cemeteries. Today however, urban life has taught the Igorot to accept practical alternative means to dispose the remains of a deceased kin through cremation.

For those who have not witnessed how this is done, we now have two of these machines located in Irisan and Kias where friends and relatives were cremated. One of the last to be cremated was Geoffrey Amistad Semon, the happy guy whose pleasant smile will always be remembered. I know he is now with the other good guys somewhere.

Researchers say cremation goes back more than 20,000 years ago as shown by the archaeological record of the remains of a cremated female body somewhere in Australia. Nobody cannot imagine how long that was. Fuels used in the process include oil, natural gas, propane, coal gas and coke while modern cremation machines now have adjustable mechanisms that can control the fire during the burning process.

After the burning is completed, the dry bone fragments are pulverized by hand or by a machine and processed to ashes that may now be called “cremated remains”. These are placed in a decorative urn and placed in the living room of the house, stored in a columbarium, buried in the ground, sprinkled on a mountain or in the sea by boat, or scattered from an airplane. The ashes of my Uncle Ismael who spent his life time on a Japanese merchant ship was scattered by boat off the coastline of La Union.

According to a Japanese-Igorot friend, the bones are not pulverized in a Japan, instead, these are collected by the family and stored in a vase. Other countries that have communities located along shorelines mix the ashes with cement and fuse the mixture in an artificial reef. Some artists mix the ashes with paint and made into a portrait of the deceased friend or relative. The most common way is that cremated remains are entombed while there were claims that wealthy families in Europe have successfully converted the cremated remains of their kin into synthetic diamonds. Peace to you on All Saints Day.