Dag-as, siyaman, laglagan & other Pinoy customs about the dearly departed

Being raised in Gulod has afforded me a front-row seat to some barrio customs about death. What seemed morbid and fearsome to me when I was a child has become a source of my own understanding of how death is also a celebration of a life well lived.

- BUM D. TENORIO, JR.

The richness of the Filipino culture is not only about life and living—it's also about the afterlife.

If the barrio life I grew up in is a barometer of Pinoy culture, it will disclose that death is a celebration, a communion among people, a reason for reverence and, at some point, revelry. All these and more can be found in our Filipino fiber.

Dag-as, obituary on the road

In those days when Gulod was still a sleepy village, a man named Tata Dodo had kept a mental note of those who had died in the barrio. Like a town crier, he brought dag-as to the people in different barrios and towns. Dag-as is an announcement of someone's passing, usually the message is for relatives who live far away from the family of the departed. Dag-as is some sort of an obituary on the road, and the news is carried by a crier.

Many in Gulod grew up knowing Tata Dodo was the barrio's well-meaning taga-dag-as or announcer of people's death so relatives of the departed would have the chance to pay their last respects. He would go house to house to a particular town where he knew the departed had known relatives. And if he couldn't locate the relatives, he would ask for help from the barangay captain to help him carry out the announcement.

In those days when people living in Gulod were practically related to everybody, Tata Dodo took to heart his self-imposed role as the person to carry the responsibility of disseminating the news of someone's death. He dug from his own pocket if he had to travel far, say to Talim Island in Rizal or to Alitagtag in Batangas, where the departed had relatives who would not have known about the death without Tata Dodo's selfless intervention. (Many times, the bereaved didn't have the time nor the energy to travel to distant places to notify their relatives about the death of a loved one.)