Death and Dying: A Filipino American Perspective

By Mariel Toni Jimenez*

The concept of family is strong in Filipino culture.  As far as I can remember, growing up both in San Francisco, then in Quezon City, Philippines to attend school, I always heard the phrase “Blood is thicker than water.”  

Having close family ties is one of the unique traits.  It is one of the outstanding cultural values that Filipinos have.  The family takes care of each other and are taught to be loyal to family and elders by simply obeying their authorities.  This is one of the unique characteristics of Filipinos.  Having fondness for family reunions during secular and religious holidays such as Christmas, New Year’s eve, All Saints’ day, All Souls day, Holy Week, Fiestas, homecomings, birthdays, weddings, graduations, baptisms, and funerals is evidence that Filipino people valued not only our cultural tradition but the spirit of our family.  As Filipinos, we are blessed to have been brought up with strong family ties.

Death in the Philippines is one of the most important occasions in family life. For many Filipinos, a death of a relative is an opportunity to strengthen ties in the family.  To pay respect and honor the relationship to the deceased, long lost relatives, friends and even relatives working abroad are reunited.  The Philippines is the home of some unique death rituals that are partly religious and mostly superstitious.  The mourning and the weeping are still present, but a happy and welcoming atmosphere would usually take place to help the deceased on his journey to the afterlife. 

What comes to mind are the rituals that Filipino have and practice.  After the death of a person, a nine-day period of having a novena of prayers and Masses offered up to the deceased is held, although the beginning of the “Siyam na araw” varies, but usually ends the week after the death. Another period follows after death, the 40-day mourning period.  Family members indicate their state of bereavement by wearing a small, black rectangular plastic pin on their left breast or breast pocket area.  A ceremonial mass is held at the end of this 40-day period.  Common belief states that the soul goes to Heaven after these 40 days, following the belief that Jesus Christ ascended to Heaven after the said period of days.

Death came in a sequence for me.  In 2009, I lost my mother, then in 2012, my spouse, then in 2015, I lost my sister and in 2017, I lost my youngest brother.  I must say that I lost faith and was forsaken.  I sought out help and answers from our parish priest on how to deal with losing faith, being unprepared, and literally trying to sabotage everything that mattered as I experienced deep chronic depression. 

Father Edward Inyanwachi, currently Director of Education at Catholic Diocese of Abakalaliki in Nigeria, then former Pastor at Archdiocese of San Francisco replied and  said,  “As a priest one of the main issues he encountered in dealing with death and dying is not only the unpredictability of death, but also the fact that loved ones do not have the power to prevent it despite the advancement in technology. In the face of death whether of the young or the old, many families not only feel helpless, but also do sometimes question God. Many believe that if God actually loved them, He would allow their loved one to remain here on earth rather than take him or her away from this life. And in the midst of their pain, many wonder why a loving God would allow such a horrible pain to befall them. They seek an explanation. So even express anger at God. But as a priest I have come to realize that it is no use trying to understand or explain death to people. Death is a deep mystery; it is our full participation in the complete self-gift of Christ to the Father. And only faith in Christ who died and rose from the dead can put death into perspective for us.”

The family is said to be the building block of the Philippine society. Filipinos have close family ties which extends to a great circle of relatives, usually including third cousins. Their sense of kinship is very strong and neighbors can usually be traced as distant family relations.

With the on-set of losing my mother, my siblings – Ate, Kuya and I stopped talking. Instead, lawyers were now a part of the conversation which could have been avoided from the beginning.  During these years of non-communication, not only did I lose time to be with them and experience mourning our common loss, instead it was “them” against “I”.  In the end, the lawyers made their money and after years of fighting, my mom’s  house was sold.  To this day, I ask myself, “How does our Filipino family values come into play?”  If we are truly close to family, why in the midst of death, our value system is suspended and the reality sets in that we are all fighting over a material object – in this case, the house and proceeds of it.

I had a chance to interview Dr. Kevin Nadal, Professor, Author, Psychologist, & Activist.  He teaches undergraduate and graduate classes at City University of New York, at three different campuses.

According to Dr. Nadal, “Often, family conflict arises when death occurs because many Filipino Americans do not like to discuss conflict at all, a lot of conflictual family dynamics come out after death. Examples can range from people holding onto grudges or families fighting over money or property.”

On the other hand, Aileen Reyes, a nurse at Kaiser Permanente (KP) offers a different take, “Death and dying may bring Filipino families closer together. She said, “I had an uncle that got really sick.  His family was from Long Island, New York but his ailment had brought other family members from Queens, New Jersey, Canada, Philippines and California together.”

Further, Dr. Nadal says, “How Filipinos deal with death depends on a number of things – what part of the Philippines they’re from, how americanized they are, how much of a family or community that they have around them. 

Along the same lines, I further explored and asked Father Edward on how does family values play into death and dying, most especially for migrants like the Filipino family that is 100% Roman Catholic and living in the United States?

Father Edward continues and says, “Filipino’s like other migrants, their cultural experiences are closely tied to their religious beliefs. The Christian faith has so permeated the environment of most migrants in the US that they cannot explain anything about themselves without recourse to their Christian belief. It is a way of life, a way of identifying and explaining life and the mysteries of life.  Hence, when these individuals or families move to the United States, they do bring along their Christian experience as previously lived in their home country. Family values are central to the cultural experiences of migrants. Family is the center of life and the key to describing an individual identity. The individual defines himself or herself only within the context of family and family life. Attachment to family is important and necessary for success in life. This attachment to family entails also attachment to the homeland. Hence, the distance between the United States and the Philippines is not felt much as long as the individual stays connected with family back home. This explains why most migrants continue to send money home not only to assist family members, but also to maintain their family ties (to register their presence despite their residence in the United States).  Now when such migrants are faced with death and dying, they have no other explanation than that which their religious belief has ingrained in them, and which they experience daily within the family. Hence, death is not only painful because it creates a vacuum but more importantly it increases the distance between the surviving migrants and the family back in the homeland.”

In the Philippines, death is something that is so common – due to the fact that people within ‘bayanihans’ all know each other.  The bayanihan (pronounced as buy-uh-nee-hun) is a Filipino custom derived from a Filipino word “bayan”, which means nation, town or community. The term bayanihan itself literally means “being in a bayan”, which refers to the spirit of communal unity, work and cooperation to achieve a particular goal.

In addition, KP nurse, Aileen Reyes, further explained that — for some Filipinos that have lived here in the US, they still have some family members that still lives in the Philippines, so whenever there is a death in the family, family members have to travel back to the Philippines to attend and take care of the funeral services, and vice-versa, if there is a death of a family member here in the United States, the family members that live in the Philippines would have to request for a visa to come to the United States to attend the funeral, if they have the means to do so.

I know of a family in Stockton, California. All sisters live and work as caretakers. Since their arrival in 1971, their Nanay has not been back to the Philippines. In 2018, she (Nanay) took a vacation and became ill, and died. It was a hardship for two of the three sisters to travel back to the Philippines to attend the funeral services, instead, there was a live-stream in real time of the mass and internment.  Times have changed with digital and electronic capabilities.  Mourning someone can be done over cyber waves.

What stands the same is that the catholic perspective of death and dying.  Both Sacred Scripture and the Catechism of the Catholic Church teach us that while death is the consequence of sin and the end of earthly life, it was not part of the original plan of God for man. God’s plan was for a share in eternal life for man, but it got derailed by sin. As a result something had to be done to deal with death and restore mankind to right relationship with God. Consequently Christ transformed death by submitting to it as an act of complete and free gift of himself to the Father. In this act of obedience, Christ transformed the curse and pain of death into a blessing. (cf. 1 Cor. 15:26, Mk. 14:33-34, Heb. 5:7-8, Rom. 5:19-21, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, #1007 -1014) Therefore, because of Christ, the Catholic understanding of death is a positive one. The essential thing here is this: through Baptism, the Christian has already died with Christ in sacrament, in order to live a new life; and if we die in Christ’s grace, physical death completes this ‘dying with Christ’ and so completes our incorporation into him in his redeeming act, explained Father Edward.

Filipinos are generally known as hospitable people. Visitors may come without notice and they will still be accommodated and entertained. Filipinos sincerely believe that serving others in the best way possible will earn them honor and friendship.

Aileen shared, “As a nurse, family members come to me to explain to them the pathophysiology of their loved ones diseases in simple terms or whether their decisions about plan of care was the correct one. With death and dying there is never a correct answer. The answer would be : what  the person who is dying wishes for him or herself.  There was an uncle that had wished to visit the Philippines when he was still alive, his family initially refused to let him go because of his disease and his chemo treatments. They had sought my advice about this issue. After hearing them out and knowing more of his disease progression and also finding out what our uncle really wanted to do, I assisted him to buy the tickets to the Philippines. He was able to visit one more time after that before he passed away . I felt good about this knowing his wishes were to see his son and grandkids in the Philippines.”

Death and dying within the Filipino American family for the most part has contradictory aspects of family interaction from the notion that Filipinos value family and have close family ties. This is illustrated with my account of the death of my mother.  I have yet to find out how to overcome bad and negative behavior. In the mean time, the Filipino American family is ever evolving in the United States.

“This article was written with the support of a journalism fellowship from the Gerontological Society of America, Journalists Network on Generations and AARP.”

*Mariel Toni Jimenez currently teaches with the Ethnic Studies department at CSU Sacramento,  Vice-Chair with the Stockton Arts Commission, and a former broadcast journalist with Filipino American Report based in San Francisco.