Peripheral Visions

bereaved is, among other things, a performer in a cultural drama that asserts basic ideas about the nature of life and death and the human heart. One of my students in Manila apologized for missing classes, because of the death of his grandfather. “I’m so sorry to hear that,” I said. “Oh no,” he said, answering the questions I forgot to ask, “we are all very happy for him; the priest was there and gave him the sacraments and now we know he is in heaven.”
    Some societies organize their recognitions of bereavement around an effort to help the bereaved regain control and forget, while other societies are geared to support the expression of grief. Some societies rehearse for grief and loss while others deny them. The most alien customs can be comforting once their rationale is understood, as an agnostic may be touched to receive a mass card, recognizing in the strange form gentleness, concern, the wish to help. Actually adopting unfamiliar customs in order to communicate is more difficult. I had been told how to offer the appropriate comfort at a village wake, but it was immensely—surprisingly—difficult not to feel a loss of authenticity in doing so. Curiously, one does not feel insincere translating words into another language, but translations of behavior come less easily.
    Filipinos are fortunate in having a worldview which allows them to face the inescapable fact of death, including it in the rhythm of life and a continuing understanding of God’s mercy. Americans treat grief almost like a disease, embarrassing and possibly infectious. For me in my own grief it was therapeutic to know that I did not have to fit American expectations, that it was all right to cry. Twenty-five years later, I can see that an awareness of these differences has stood me in good stead. What I learned in the Philippines from Martin’s birth and death prepared me for living and dying still to come; a village street, a wake, a hospital bed, encounters with grief in deepened understanding like a Fibonacci series.
    Barkev and I had another protection from the pain and learning offered by unfamiliar forms, which was that after centuries of colonialism many urban Filipinos, like women and minorities, have become experienced at managing the contrasts that pervade their lives. They know that the behavior of foreigners may not be appropriate and regard the reactions of Westerners not so much as abhorrent but as erratic, so they try to avoid triggering unpredictable results. Those who overcome this reticence are likely to be those who most genuinely wish to be helpful. Friends came to each of us with their sympathy, and we were ready to recognize it and be comforted.
    In recent years there has been a flood of discussion of the “other”: that person or group that inhabits the imagination and, loved or hated, seems profoundly and significantly different. Whether negative or positive, the presence of the other leads to self-consciousness and puts familiar ways of being in question. Sometimes the other is the opposite sex, sometimes a minority group, sometimes even a distant culture described in terms that counterpoint one’s own: Tahiti, darkest Africa, the mysterious Orient—all those regions whose strangeness is underlined to affirm the familiar. For a member of a dominant group, the sense of self is enhanced by a conviction of the inferiority of the other. Colonists may become more British or more French than they would have been at home. Any nation that has suffered or benefited from foreign occupation rapidly develops stereotypes and theories to explain behavior that seems bizarre. Such situations of sustained contact and contrast often find their own equilibrium and, in doing so, cease to be contexts for learning. Instead they become layered with rage and frustration.
    A friend died when I was in Israel. This time I was given a briefing based on an awareness of both cultures and carefully warned about Orthodox burials so I would not be shocked at the thought of a body laid in the ground without a coffin. “We don’t do it like the goyim ,” I was told. Reminded that I was an outsider, I found myself drawn to the poetry of a genuine return to the earth. Often in Jewish history, the goyim , the gentiles, were illiterate and bigoted peasants, a reference point for differentiation. Sometimes, however, in periods of assimilation, being “like the goyim ” beckoned, in spite of centuries of limiting influence and exchange.