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.
