Last week it was wake, today it was the funeral.
I had a funeral to attend today so I got dolled up and headed out for that. Unlike in Canada where people usually wear all black, here in the Philippines people usually wear white, like a clean, white dress shirt. I wore a black pencil skirt and a white blouse.
The funeral service was held at a Filipino military church. It was a massive Catholic Church with high white walls and it was buzzing with all those who had came for the funeral. White on the walls, white shirts on the people, and then a white tent with white chairs for us all to sit in at the actual burial site.
The choir sang during the church funeral service and then light music played over the speakers at the burial. I watched as many approached the coffin, said their last goodbye, and then placed a white daisy on in before they lowered it into the ground. The coffin had a pile of daisies on it and "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" played as they lowered it. A truck with dirt then came and covered the coffin with its contents. A more upbeat version of the same song, "Somewhere Over the Rainbow", then played and that confirmed closure.
It was so beautiful.
"Now comes the hard part", I had noted, "Now to continue life without him".
It's hard to lose someone. I hadn't even met this particular person, I had gone there to support family, but I too found myself getting emotional over the service. To see people that only two months ago were strangers to me but now are a part of my life, to see them crying and broken over their loss, you can't help but feel upset to see them upset.
In many ways this felt like my mother's funeral all over again but experiencing it from a different perspective.
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