There wasn’t a single cloud in the sky; the sun was shining brightly above us when we exited the car, stepping onto the gravel of the parking lot and ridding our clothes from the creases caused by the long trip.
The great big blue above me stared back when I looked up at its endless clarity, and I thought to myself: What terrible weather for a funeral. In fact, what kind of funeral takes place in the middle of summer? You would think the dead would have a little more consideration and have the courtesy to die in more convenient weather.
Perhaps these thoughts weren’t exactly the most respectful, but you see, I wasn’t personally acquainted with the dead guy. He was my sister’s friend’s father, and my ninang’s husband, so I was there mostly out of obligation.
I didn’t even have time to adequately prepare myself before we left that morning— my mother came into my sister and I’s shared room, told us to get up and get dressed, then promptly left to prepare breakfast. When we asked where we were going she didn’t even turn to face us: “We’re going to a funeral.”
So now there I was, lagging behind my two older siblings in just a t-shirt and jeans, an ensemble I would rather be caught dead in than wear on any other day I go out. Unfortunately, I didn’t really have a choice, I had nothing white left to wear.
But for that moment I thanked whoever decided it was more appropriate to wear white to a funeral, as the sun was particularly alive today in its insistence to engulf us in its heat. The dull colors of my ensemble saved me from its hold, lest I join the deceased in his grave.
We were walking briskly towards a garden, with tall trees whose shadows inched closer towards us every second, beckoning us to find shelter in their embrace.
As soon as I felt the shadow on my skin, I sighed in relief, tugging at my collar in an attempt to save myself from the humidity. As I was preventing myself from roasting in the sun, I sighed to myself, and that was when I got a whiff of eucalyptus from a tree nearby.
I’ve always associated the smell of eucalyptus with death and antiquity. It’s a smell that seemed to follow me in every vaguely ancient place—historical sites, museums, churches, the elderly’s homes…and of course, graveyards.
My paternal grandfather, my family’s beloved kong-kong, was also buried in a graveyard surrounded by a garden. When we passed the other graves to get to his, the scent of eucalyptus would remind me that this was a place of sorrow and decay, and the hair on the back of my neck would rise as I felt like I was stepping into a world where the living were no longer the inhabitants, but the visitors.
It was a terribly pleasant smell for an equally terrible feeling.
Walking through this new graveyard I’ve never been to, attending the funeral rites of someone I didn’t know, brought me to that same feeling—though it hadn’t entirely sunk in for fifteen year old me, humming along to The Living Tombstone playing in my ears thinking it was the funniest shit in the world.
On the gravel path leading to the chapel, dotted with flowers whose smells were overshadowed by the eucalyptus, I saw the other attendees gathering outside. My mother took one look at me and motioned for me to remove my earphones. “Be respectful,” she told me, turning around to greet a friend from the crowd.
I wasn’t entirely sure then who I had to give respect to, as the deceased couldn’t exactly materialize from his ashes to tell me off, but I knew better than to defy my mother. Shoving my earphones into the pocket of my jeans, I watched as the attendees conversed amongst themselves in hushed tones. Their eyes shifted from the chapel to the garden, and it was then that I began to get an inkling of what my mother wanted me to respect—death’s presence was palpable amidst the crowd like a plague, and I could feel it coming from the small chapel we were all called to enter.
I watched as we were all silently ushered into the world of the dead, the silence louder than our collective heartbeats, the only thing differentiating us from the ashes on the altar. The heavy doors of the chapel were clasped shut as soon as we were all inside, cutting us off from the rest of the living.
Looking around the packed chapel, the other attendees were like shadows given form, grief hanging over their faces like veils, like if they did not show the proper fear and respect that death demanded, it would come for them soon too.
These silent instructions and unspoken rules of courtesy only further deepened the dread that was beginning to crawl under my skin, only made worse when I caught sight of the evergreen tree right outside the window I was sitting next to.
The smell of its leaves creeping through the cracks in the window paralyzed me as it beckoned me further into the depths of my mind, back to that graveyard where my grandfather lay and where my own grave would be waiting for me.
It was only until the funeral rites had finished that I could feel sensations in my limbs again, prickly with anxiety. I followed the others back out to the garden, where the eucalyptus followed me like a sickly perfume to the deceased’s final resting place: inside a cubby in a wall of plaques of others who had passed long before.
I stayed behind the crowd, in the shade of the evergreen trees, watching the gravekeeper gently place his ashes inside before screwing in his own plaque, the jar of ashes never to be seen again.
I wandered around the garden once everyone began to disperse, and I began to pick up on a different scent nearby—that of cigarettes, freshly lit. Hidden away from the others was a pair of men who were sharing a pack, quietly talking to each other, hidden by the greenery.
It sparked a different set of emotions within me, watching the smoke waver in the short breeze that blew through the garden, bringing the smells closer to me.
My kong-kong was a chain smoker, or so I’ve heard. I couldn’t help but think of him again whenever I caught the scent, which was easy to come by in my area of Metro Manila.
Mixed with the scent of the eucalyptus, my limited memory and knowledge of him began to take over every thought in my mind, filling me once again with that familiar dread.
In all fifteen years of my life, nobody taught me how to deal with the concept of death, and before this day, my kong-kong was only that—a concept. A death in the family that served as a warning to the rest of us alive. But standing here, the scent of tobacco and eucalyptus mingling in the air, his death felt more concrete to me, and the reality of my mortality had begun to sink in.
Only nine months after I was born, my kong-kong had died—It felt like my birth had punctuated his life, but because I was too young to deal with the sorrow and grief that comes with losing a family member, I’ve never once been confronted with the pain that entails nor the existential dread that comes with it. It was this short time frame between the beginning of my life and the end of his that cursed me with a fear I had never experienced until this very day.
Though it wasn’t his vice that took him, but a cancer that even now I could feel growing in the marrows of my bone, gnawing at my being and waiting for the day that my body could no longer fight against it.
It was an ache that permeated when I looked at the altar in my home, the home he once lived in—where even after fifteen years the smell of smoke never left. An ache that paralyzed me when I visited my grandmother, his wife, and her garden of eucalyptus; Like even she herself could never let go of the sorrow that came with its smell.
It was a pain that settled in the depths of my stomach when we prayed for his eternal soul every November and December, holding tight onto the rosary beads that bruised my fingertips as I begged the powers that be that I would not suffer the same fate.
Ever since we attended that funeral, his ghost had become a constant presence in my life. It came in the form of these smells and sensations, a chill that traveled up my spine and spreading like electricity across my body. It felt like he was watching over my shoulder constantly, haunting the baby that he had held only once before passing.
For the longest time, it felt that I could never let go of this anxiety. The feeling of being watched by a spirit not unlike your own was one that I felt everyday since that funeral. It had come to the point where it felt that he was not alone in watching my every move.
It felt like even death itself had come to observe me. My heartbeat was like a timer ticking down, the hands of time ringing in my ears every time I crossed the road, or looked over a ledge, or held a blade so close to myself that I couldn’t help but move slower to make sure it never touched my skin.
The smell of nicotine and eucalyptus followed me the same way, like a perfume that death put on just for me. Its bony fingers felt not unlike kong-kong’s when it grasped my shoulder, whispering into my ear in the wee hours of the night, taunting me in my sleep, cradling me the same way he did all those years ago.
Eventually, I knew that I had to get a hold of myself, lest I let this anxiety drive me into insanity. I figured that the best way to help myself was to put a story to the man haunting me.
I began to ask more about him, hoping that perhaps a better understanding would soothe my erratically beating heart. The memories my family recounted to me were vivid. They spoke of a serious man who knew how to laugh, a penny pincher who often went on vacations. The smell of nicotine that wafted through his lips when he spoke, implanting a disliking of tobacco in my family when he ultimately died.
The more I learned about him, the more I realized that perhaps we were more alike than I thought, that perhaps his death and my birth were less a curse on my life but a passing of the torch.
Soon enough, his presence in my life began to feel comforting. It felt less like he was waiting for me to die, and more waiting to see where my own life would go. I was understanding his place in my story the more I learned about his, and realized that he was not quite the bogeyman in my head that I made him out to be.
A year after that funeral, I visited kong-kong’s grave in November with my family. As they set up the chairs in preparation for the rosary, I took the time to stroll around the garden where he was buried. On that day, I inhaled the scent of eucalyptus and cigarettes deeply, and smiled at the memories of my paternal grandfather, and basked in the sun with his spirit beneath the great big blue above us.