Beautifying the dead: An Ethnography of a mortician and her nine-year old apprentice

Beautifying the dead:  An Ethnography of a mortician

and her nine-year old apprentice

Prepared by

Cheryl Samonte and Marcial I. Enginco

For

Eufracio Abaya, PhD

Professor, EDFD 225  Educational Anthropology

College of Education

University of the Philippines Diliman

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

What makes people decide which career path to choose and how do they learn the skills and knowledge required to dispense of the responsibilities called for by the job? 

The choice of a career relies on many distinct factors, none of which is more important than the other.  Some are influenced by trends, others by parents, mentors and peers; even the media through its glamorization of certain professions play a critical role in nudging an impressionable person into a certain direction.  Some careers, however, do not come from these molds, as the chosen paths of the interlocutors of this ethnography will show.

INTRODUCTION

A morbid fascination

When my mother suddenly died October of last year, I together with my family and friends, including neighbors and acquaintances were shocked and devastated.  At 77, she was the model of a woman aging gracefully and, relative to her age, healthily.  Her diet was regimented, consisting mainly of fish and vegetables.  She religiously observed her regular activities including going to mass daily, tending to her garden, visiting her friends and occasionally going with them to the mall, and every first Friday of the month – making her devotion to the Our Lady of Manaoag in her home province Pangasinan, where she would commute via a series of bus rides from our home in Lipa. 

But as much as we were grief-stricken, seeing her inside her casket looking calm and serene, even short of smiling, somehow eased the pain of knowing that she is gone; the oft-repeated complement, “parang natutulog lang” aptly describes her horizontal state and gives the impression that she died happily, to the relief of those of us that she left behind.

Over the next several months, I visited several wakes of friends’ dead relatives and most of them, if not all, found deep solace in finding their dear departed appearing serene and at ease that the condoling words “Mas masaya na siya ngayon,” is taken literally, rather than figuratively.  This visual consolation, I realize, is the priceless byproduct of the makeup artist for the dead – the mortician, whose representatives are the subjects of this ethnography.

Fear of the dead as a cultural phenomenon

Most people in a society have the tendency to distance themselves from jobs that are risqué such as prostitution, or violent such as gun-for-hire, or strange and grotesque such as embalming or beautifying cadavers.  This aversion of the masses, too, extends to the people who have chosen or are already involved in such careers.  Thus, while an adult who is a full-fledged mortician will no longer get as much ridicule or raised eyebrows, she would still get her fair share of encounters with people, especially those that do not know her personally, who would surreptitiously give her a polite smile and a cold shoulder when they learn that she makes dead people beautiful for a living.

On the other hand, when a Filipino child is asked what he or she wants to be when she is old enough, a typical answer would be to become a doctor, or an engineer, or a nurse, or any mainstream profession that readily commands esteem, recognition, and – to a great extent -- handsome remuneration.  Curiously, a child who says she wants to be a mortician will, in most social settings that are divorced from the context in which the statement is made, be looked upon as troubled or has a strange affinity for the macabre and the morbid, and thus should be referred to his/her parents for guidance, or to the nearest psychologist for evaluation and, if deemed necessary, intervention.

This unfair assessment of people working in non-mainstream industries, in this case, cadaver preparation, has been brought about, rightly or wrongly, by misplaced judgments based on a combination of ignorance of the industry, its workers and practices, and the almost paralyzing fear of the unknown still prevalent among many Filipinos, especially of the spirit world in which the dead body is supposed to be handled with extreme care, if not reverence or else its unhappy spirit may haunt the living. 

In her essay (Constantino, 1966) entitled The Filipino mental make-up and science, Josefina Constantino describes the Filipino’s lack of objectivity, thusly: 

The Filipino loves a sense of Oriental Mysticism: a kind of exotic, secret darkness conducive to a sense of mystery.  But a whole enveloping sense of the supernatural needs a continuing intellectualization in order to render the vagueness of Oriental faith more coherently luminous and intellectualized.  In general, therefore, one can say that the Oriental deification of natural forces prevents their analytical and objective study of forces apart from their faith.

This concept of overlapping worlds of the living and the dead is nothing new and has been part of many cultures for ages, passing from one generation to another because there is neither a force or phenomenon big and sustainable enough that can unsettle this belief, which could lead to a significant shift in attitude.  Roger Keesing in a paper he wrote entitled Theories of Culture (Keesing, 1974), cites that cultural behavioral pattern is socially transmitted and that it serves to relate human communities to their ecological settings, which, in this case, extends to the spirit world and the notions and connotations contingent to its interpretations and conceptions, the real and the imagined.

THE APPROACH

This ethnography will show how the interlocutors found themselves in such a committed state to beautifying the dead despite the social norms that have placed them and their kind on the periphery of the mainstream, and the ways and means in which they learned, honed and improved on the skills needed in their chosen craft.

The researchers used personal interview as its main source of information, which is supplemented by observation of verbal and physical cues.

While the information, attitudes and social context stated in this study are true for the interlocutors, the same may not necessarily apply to other morticians.  Likewise, the study does not cover an actual servicing of a cadaver which could have given us the sense of the expertise as well as the level of comfort of the interlocutors in handling a dead body.  Likewise, the two separate days from which this paper is based on may not have been enough to uncover the complexity and the nuances of living the life of a busy mortician, or in the case of Brittany and Dana, a glimpse of their behavioral patterns amongst dead people.

APPLYING LEARNING THEORIES

To be an embalmer, one must undergo trainings and pass an Embalming Certification test.  However, no school or university offers any course in preparing the dead for visual presentation inside a casket, nor are there conventions how a dead person should look while being viewed; social norms and mores coupled with an individual’s cultural sensitivity suffice as a loose guideline on how such work should be conducted.  Hence, someone who is interested in working as a mortician is left to his or her own devices in as far as learning the craft and pushing its limits are concerned.

Literacy is often defined in academic circles as the ability to read, write and do arithmetic, ostensibly for productive pursuits.  This somewhat exclusive definition of literacy places a mortician’s knowledge and skills base, which hedge on the practical, outside of the popular defined meaning.  However, it is -- like hunting or foraging for food by the Maoris of New Zealand and the Aborigines of Australia, or the construction of the Banawe Rice Terraces of the Ifugaos in the Philippines -- no less important or indispensable to a society than any of the literate skills accepted by western-style education.  Further, because beautifying the dead requires learning, leaves room for innovation, and produces an invaluable contribution to society, it should be rightfully considered a type of literacy.  

While the interlocutors of this ethnography learned their skills through differing contexts and have taken different entry points to the profession,  Albert  Bandura’s social learning theory  puts into perspective how both the interlocutors were able to acquire their knowledge.

The social learning theory, also called observational learning or vicarious learning, states that learning occurs as a function of observing others who serve as a model, noting the consequences of what is observed, and then replicating the behavior.  Because of the absence of standards, it will be noted that the elder mortician, through her experience and personal observation of her work and its results, has began to use these self-discovered baselines as a platform to better her craft in such a way that she had, over time, developed her own set of techniques and values, which may be different from those of other morticians.  This conscious decision to better her craft based on her life experiences can be considered incidental learning, where learning is planned yet unstructured.

Meet the Morticians: Flor and Brittany

This section would present varying ways in which the social learning theory as well as incidental learning apply to two generations of the Dayao family, and how their respective environment and social underpinnings weighed in on their decisions  to pursue a life in the funeral business as morticians, as well making them feel at ease in a milieu that most would be scared of.

Flor Dayao:  Married into the business

Flor Dayao is a 56-year old wife to a licensed embalmer, mother to 3, and grandmother to 2 beautiful and intelligent girls, Brittany, nine years old and Dana, two.  While movies and the media may have created a stereotyped image of a mortician as a somber looking, detached and unsociable loner, Flor is as bubbly and warm as any one’s favorite aunt.  In fact, she was the only one of the several morticians we sought who gladly obliged an interview; others, upon realizing that our purpose was to strike a conversation and not offer a cadaver to be made up, grumpily and abruptly turned down our request.  During our conversations, she was relaxed, spontaneous and very open.

Flor who took up a secretarial course, it seemed, was fated to become a mortician as her boyfriend of seven years owned a funeral business.  The long courtship has prepared her mentally and emotionally to be part of such a sensitive profession that by the time they got married, she was ready and willing to assume a role in the family business. 

Consistent with the social learning theory where the learner gains knowledge by observing and modeling, Flor initially served as her husband’s assistant, while keeping a keen eye on how their resident mortician was handling the makeup job.  Over time, she realized that this was one area in the business operation where she could contribute the most and that would take advantage of her innate artistic talent.   Flor claims that she always had the knack for beauty and the arts – and painting life to a pallid face was, in itself, an art form that she’d like to immerse herself in.

She could no longer recall her first encounter with a cadaver as a makeup artist but she remembers that she was feeling a bit tense, not because she was scared, but because – just like any neophyte wishing to do a good job -- she was still learning the ropes of the craft and was mindful at how the dead’s kin would react to her handiwork.  From time to time she would enlist the advice of her husband’s uncle who was himself a mortician based in Canada.  But before long, it was through learning from her own experiences, consistent with the incidental learning model, that she was able to develop her style and techniques.  She said that her most important goal in every commissioned work is to produce a result that makes the cadaver look as if it was in a state of natural sleep. 

This is, however, easier said than done, especially when the dead is a victim of drowning or a head wound, which requires more care, patience and determination to make the dead look as fresh-looking as possible.  Even then, the result is almost always less than the goal.  Also, Flor considers applying the right skin tone and color as critical; too much color and the dead would look vulgar, as if she was about to go to a party, too light or too dark and the dead would scare the visitors away.  “Ang patay, kapag pangit ang makeup, taon na ang nakalipas pinag-uusapan pa,” Flor explains why she does not want her work to be associated with shoddy service. 

“Alam niyo kasi, walang namamatay na nakangiti.  Lahat sila ay mukhang nahirapan dahil naghahabol sila ng hininga.”

She then shares some of the tricks of her trade to make the dead look pleasantly at rest.  To eliminate the winced look on the mouth area as a result of gasping for air, Flor manually kneads the mouth muscles so that it forms a smile before the embalmer injects formalin to solidify the demeanor.  Because the eyes roll backward into the socket after death, she meticulously inserts thin pieces of cotton into the eyelids until the normal eye bulge size is retained, making sure that there are no noticeable lumps which would reveal the inside job.  The same is done for hollowed cheeks, but this time, with much larger cotton balls.  If the nostrils are profuse with hair, she snips them away with scissors; she also does the same when there is excessive facial hair.  She is more careful though with dyeing the hair because there are relatives who prefer their dead one to look like the last day when he or she was seen alive.

Because of her dedication and ability to beautify the dead, Flor’s confidence grew, and along with it the reputation she had in the community as the mortician of choice, both of the poor and the rich.  “Mapa-mayaman o mapa-mahirap, pareho din lang ang makeup na ginagamit ko.  Lahat signature,” Flor shares her equal treatment of her dead clients, “mahirap ka na nga, magmumukha ka pang mahirap sa kabaong mo, eh di lalo kang nag-mukhang kawawa.”

Flor initially claimed that anyone can work as a mortician, and that it takes no special characteristic to be one, but this is belied by an anecdote she shared about one of her daughters who signified her intention to learn embalming.    While in a training session with her father involving a real fresh cadaver to be embalmed, the daughter hesitated to insert a tube into the cadaver which should drain blood and body liquids.  She went out of the operating room and promptly lit a cigarette, which according to Flor herself, was an indication of nerves.  The daughter no longer pursued embalming after that.

Flor is active in the local church as a member of the Christian Women’s League.  This is where she feels comfortable socially because members know her line of work; some are even contracting her to do their make up when they are dead.  However, her friendship with them had not encouraged them to see the dead the way Flor does; to them the cadaver, unless it is of a relative or a dear one, must be avoided at all cost.

Brittany:  Born into the business

The future of Dayao Funeral Homes lies in the small, delicate hands of Brittany, Flor’s 9-year old granddaughter, who declared that she would one day assume management of the family enterprise.   Like most girls her age, she is a fan of Taylor Swift and likes mimicking gyrating dances on TV, a talent she allowed us to see after a little prodding from her Mama Flor.

Brittany literally opened her eyes to dead people as she was raised in the family compound that also served as the business’ base of operations, where she was freely exposed to what her grandparents did for a living.  Because of this, she is, unlike many children her age, comfortable being around cadavers, even touching them.  It is this level of ease with dead people that encouraged the then seven year old to tag along with her grandmother as she performed her job in the morgue inside the family compound, or when called in for home service in another barrio, or as a freelancer in other funeral homes.  Acting with an uncharacteristic sense of purpose, Brittany would surprisingly transform from a carefree child who still plays with a huge teddy bear to a no-nonsense professional assistant as she hands her Mama Flor brushes and makeups the way a nurse would hand over scalpel and scissors to a surgeon.  After the operation, she would promptly clean the tools of the trade and carefully replace them in her Mama Flor’s makeup kit.

It is in one of these sorties that Brittany volunteered to do the makeup herself when she saw that the dead was a baby.  Apprehensive but not wanting to nip in the bud her granddaughter’s enthusiasm for the craft, she allowed her to do the makeup, assessing that it was a simple job anyway.  Though her trained eyes spotted some flaws in Brittany’s first on the job experience, the satisfied reaction of the dead baby’s parents convinced her that she had found her heir-apparent.  Two years later, Mama Flor had lost count at how many dead young children Brittany had beautified. 

When asked what she feels when doing makeup, Brittany answers like the child that she is: Masaya po.  Iniisip ko lang na mine-make-up-an ko ang manika ko.   She further adds, “Di naman ako natatakot.  Pero mga classmates ko po natatakot.  Akala nila gumagalaw ang mga patay.”

CONCLUSION

Society often dictates what is and what is not acceptable, what is mainstream and what is out.  Those left out of the majority are often discriminated against or put at a disadvantage in terms of opportunities and social acceptance.  However, some people belonging to the minority are there because of choices that are so obvious, and that they are somewhat outcasts not because they have done something wrong or are abominable in some way, but rather because their decisions run counter to what others would make under similar circumstances. A popular funeral business name such as Paz, like the Malabanan of pozo negro fame, often become punchlines because of the nature of the business, and not because of their lack of success.  In fact, a funeral home is lucrative business, as Flor Dayao herself admits.  Through their family’s small enterprise, they were able to send three children to college and are sufficiently funded to ride out rough times, as they say, “May buhay sa hanap patay.”

Because morticians and embalmers are left out of the mainstream, their next of kin usually take their place in the business; thereby perpetuating a line of interest.  Hence, Flor weds into the business, while Brittany was born into it.   Although, it remains to be seen whether Brittany will remain true to her vow to take over the business someday, as she intimated that she wants to study to become a nurse.  This niche, pun intended, and internal breeding assure that competition will almost always be relegated to a few families, and that new entries are highly unlikely, at least not in the prolific degree that successful mainstream enterprises normally spawn copycats.

The social learning theory or learning through observation is in full display in this ethnography; so is the incidental learning concept, because in the absence of formal and structured knowledge transfer, Flor decided on her own that she is going to develop her style according to her experiences and assessment of her own works.

The culture of an individual is greatly influenced by what he or she sees as normal on a daily basis, and also by her experiences which either confirm or debunk what the majority of people believe or assume to be true, or at least somewhat truthful.  Hence, when Brittany and her 2-year old sister Dana sees, and even interacts with dead people, then it is as normal to them as other children opening their eyes to a litter of dogs, or to a plethora of malls.  And if based on their experience that the dead does not do harm, nor do they haunt them in their sleep and even waking hours, then they would view them differently from other children who have been taught both by tradition and popular media that the dead can inflict malevolence, and therefore must be feared and kept at bay.