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Uncle Dao had many times been called a “useless bum”.
He had no job, no income, no family. He spent his weekends gambling horses at the Turf Club. He and his wife had divorced and he was hardly ever at home to spend time with his children. He spent his nights getting drunk.
From where he had obtained money to drink and gamble, I was not sure. His grown-up children, perhaps. It could not have possibly been that his gambling luck was good enough to afford him regular beer.
Then he died.
Apparently, he was drunk that night and walking along a flyover where he should not have been walking in the first place. A car hit him and the impact flung him down to the road below.
What a tragic death.
Uncle Dao and his family were Catholics. His untimely death - along with his less-than-exemplary life - raised concerns among family members for “the welfare of his soul”.
In other words, some family members were concerned about whether he would go to heaven. You know how Catholics and other Christians are - that’s always their prime concern whenever somebody dies.
Funeral
They were also worried that they might not be able to find a priest to perform his funeral mass.
Everything had happened so quickly. If Uncle Dao had been an active member of some church organisation - perhaps a prayer group or a Bible study class - for sure his priest would drop all other commitments to attend to him.
But here was a man almost outcast from the church. A “sinner”. Which priest would come to him at short notice?
Then, surprises of surprises! When the time came for his final send off, not one priest turned up, but two.
Another surprise awaited. It is normal practice at Catholic funeral masses that, after a reading of the Bible, the priest would deliver a short sermon, usually commenting about how death is not “the end” but actually “the beginning” of eternal life.
Here’s the next surprise, the bigger surprise. The priest who was to deliver the sermon was a young Filipino who, as it turned out, knew Uncle Dao as a friend.
So instead of the usual sermon, he delivered a beautiful eulogy about Uncle Dao’s deep yearning for God.
Prayer
He told the small congregation about how Uncle Dao would go to church late at night, when no one else was around, and sit right at the back in silent, wordless prayer. What could a man who was down and out say to God in prayer? What words could he possibly utter?
The image of Uncle Dao crouched at the back of the church vividly brought to mind one of the stories that Jesus told his disciples, about two men who went to the temple (remember, there were no churches during Jesus’ time) to pray...
One man stood right at the front of the temple and prayed loudly, proclaiming all the good things that he had done in his lifetime and thanking God for the fact that he is not like other sinners.
The other man sat quietly at the back of the temple and said, in his heart, “Forgive me, God, a sinner.”
Who made the more meaningful prayer?
The young priest also told about how Uncle Dao sometimes sought him out, either to confess his sins, pour out his woes, or simply to chat... about his family, about his life.
Celebration
Finally, he related an occasion when Uncle Dao invited him to bless his new, tiny apartment. No one was home for this auspicous occasion. Yet when the priest had finished the ceremony, Uncle Dao invited him to stay on for a celebration. He produced two packets of rice and they shared a simple meal, with Coca Cola.
We saw a different side of Uncle Dao on his last day on Earth. We saw not the “useless bum” that he was commonly portrayed to be, but a man struggling hard to find peace in God.
This was a side unknown even to his immediately family, until barely two hours before he was reduced by fire to ashes.
Uncle Dao, penniless and “useless”, had left a valuable legacy. He taught us - taught me, at least - not to be too hasty judge a person who appear, on the surface, to be good-for-nothing.
He further taught me to look beyond a person’s achievements, or lack of them. I had been directed to look at his soul. There, I saw not his uselessness but his efforts, not his failures but his desire for success, not his broken family but his wanting to love.
Just that, for some reason, he was not able to manifest the yearnings of his soul. He could not do it, not that he did not want to.
Sure, life would have been more comfortable for all concerned if Uncle Dao had a steady job, regular income and a stable family, if he never gambled, drank nor indulged in other so-called vices.
But then he would have led an ordinary life and died an ordinary death. And there would have been nothing much to remember him by.
What happened instead was that Uncle Dao’s death had left a very deep impression on someone like myself who hardly knew him in his life. Perhaps he might even leave an impression on some of you who only know him through this little story.
May he rest in peace!