Chapter 16: THE ART OF RESURRECTING THE DEAD


It was one of those dreary days, as I walked alone on the same old street I used to pass by, when the sun was not shining because it was cloudy and there was an intermittent rain. And to add to the gloominess, I saw a pair of crows perched high up on the branch of a tree with their hungry, fiendish eyes looking at me like I'm dinner and eerily squawking as if they were enjoying the dismal day. I tried to scare them away but instead they gave me the finger. Frustrated, I just ignored them and continued walking away. From afar I could still hear their infuriating, gleeful squawking. To remember those two malevolent crows, I christened them Jack and Jill.

It was almost dark when I eventually ended up in front of my friend's house, Juan Tabagwang. Inside, I saw him deep into spiritual inquiry. He was peering into his Holy Book.

"Juan, why are you into sudden spirituality?" I asked with amazement.

He just glanced at me without turning his back, and then continued with his spiritual searching. Suddenly, he exclaimed, "Eureka! I found it!"

"Found what?"

"The secret of resurrection," Juan replied who looked back at me, his eyes wide open as if he was hit by an instant revelation from above. And before I could say another word, he ran out of the house. I ran after him.

I called after him, still bewildered by his weird action, "Where to, Juan?"

"To the wake of my grandmother," he answered with great excitement.

"Why, are you going to resurrect your grandmother?"

Juan did not answer me. Rather, he gave me an irritated look. I responded to him with an impish smile. Anyway, we eventually found ourselves in the funeral home. There were many people, relatives of Juan. Many were crying, others were mourning, and some were giving eulogies and reminding everyone to always remember Juan's dead grandmother.

Juan greeted his relatives. For a while he listened to the eulogies. Afterward, he went to the coffin of his grandmother, he looked at her through the glass cover for a minute, and then slowly turned to the mourners.

"Idiots!" he shouted suddenly and irreverently at them. "All your weeping, praises, and exhortation to always remember our grandmother are worthless. Those cannot bring her back to life!"

All the mourners, including me, were stunned by what Juan just said. There was a long silence.

"When our grandmother was alive, you took her for granted as if she was a useless thing. You did not take good care of her," Juan continued with his scathing sermon. "Morons! You should instead be praying to God to remember our grandmother because God is the only one who can resurrect her … "

Juan was unable to finish his diatribe lecture, one of his uncles rushed toward him, and a fight ensued which degenerated into pandemonium. In the confused fighting, the coffin was accidentally overturned. It crashed to the floor, its lid opened. And Juan's grandmother abruptly perked up, her darkened hollow eyes were open wide and she looked ghostly in appearance.

"Impertinent pinheads!" the grandmother suddenly shouted angrily in her piercing and high-pitched voice as she looked at everyone who was fighting around her. "You mistakenly thought I was dead and put me in a coffin, and while I'm enjoying and trying to sleep peacefully in here in death, you woke me up by your noisy fighting!"

Everybody was shocked and froze with fright with the sudden coming back to life of Juan's grandmother. Then, except for me and Juan, they all stampeded out through the door, others through the windows.

Outside, on the roof were the two crows, Jack and Jill, squawking gleefully as they watched and gave the finger to the mourners who were running in different directions. The eyes of Jack and Jill had a diabolical look at the thought of a dinner, a feasting on a cadaver in a coffin.

Back inside the funeral home, Juan's grandmother, with difficulty, was trying to get out of the coffin as she looked at me and Juan. "Why are you two looking at me as if I look like a ghost?" she said impatiently. "Help me out here."

Gladly we helped her out of the coffin while at the same time Juan's relatives who had regained their wits, slowly and one by one, had returned. Though his relatives were astonished at what happened, it was apparent that joy could be seen on their faces.

"Grandma, you're alive!" Juan remarked, delighted.

"Stupid!" grandma exclaimed. "Would I be talking to you if I were dead?"

Juan blushed as he scratched his head. However, after a month, I heard from Juan that his grandmother is now being treated respectfully and kindly by his family and relatives.

As usual, Juan and I found ourselves again at the Tomadors' Tavern drinking 16 bottles of "agua de pataranta," the ambrosia of wines. But since Maria D' Kapri, the Super Kapre, was in one of her mood swings again, she treated us as if we were dead drunks that needed to be resurrected to soberness. So, even before we finished our drinks, she kicked us out of the tavern into the bone-chilling night. The cold somehow lessened our drunkenness a little.

And as usual, on our way home we passed by the house of Kurso, the Great, and his young beautiful wife. We stealthily sneaked under the crawl space of their house to check if Kurso is still alive. He's alive alright because we found out that their bed was noisily rocking and creaking. Afterward, we silently sneaked out of the crawl space.

And again, as usual, we sung the irritating drunken song of resurrection, "Lalala …, sing with us now all you alive but artistically dead artists of the world, lalala …."

But our singing was interrupted when we heard the arguing squawks of the two crows, Jack and Jill, flying overhead. They were angry and blaming each other probably because they missed again their cadaver evening feast. This time, Juan and I gave them the finger.