ma'am hermosa's wake

high school classmates in the philippines attended the wake of one of our professors, eleanor eme hermosa. she taught english, and yanno... i can't remember what she taught. i don't think i was ever her student.

my high school class trade pix and emails on weddings, births, christenings, graduations, engagements, plans. our collection of memorabilia now includes a funeral, our larger life landmarks, complete.

ada's pix featured other old professors who visited ma'am hermosa's wake - including sir alonzo, who dreamed of us visiting the greek parthenon while he taught world civilizations. ahahaha. we were 16 years old or thereabouts, juniors in a quezon city high school. her pix brought back so many comforting memories.

look at that pix. it has so many flowers and fake electric candles. the point of the plastic candles is to give light while evoking a sense of sacredness. the flowers remind us of what heaven must be like.

i haven't been to too many wakes here in the u.s., catholic or non-catholic. my sister, early on at 12, had to visit the wake of one of her hindu classmates, killed in a head-on car crash that also claimed the lives of i think a father and another sibling. the accident was so bad that the casket was closed. my mother also told of a young nurse who was killed in a head-on car crash with a semi-trailer truck, her body so dragged along 10 miles or so along the kennedy expressway, that there was none left of her to bury. her casket was also closed.

during my father's wake, i never thought of the flowers, the candles, the ritual prayers and his embalmed, made-statue-ed body. that wasn't him. ma'am hermosa has one sister and a male partner she lived with while in singapore, where she had taken ill. i wonder if her relatives consider she left them while in singapore, or just these past few days, when it is said the dead's spirit lingers for three days and then truly passes on.  ¶ 9/28/2005 04:39:00 PM