Tag Archives: funeral parlor

Walk the extra mile

Oftentimes, social workers have to perform certain task beyond the call of duty. This, I know from a nun that I met while conducting interviews with social workers at Caritas. The nun recounted her six-year stint as member of the disaster management team of their religious organization. Two of her unforgettable disaster experiences were the lahar flows in Pampanga and the great flood in Ormoc, where thousands of people perished. Without a funeral planning guide, the nun and her group literally carry the bodies to the funeral parlor to give the victims a decent burial especially the unidentified and unclaimed bodies. If she cares for the dead, she also showed the same compassion for the dying. The nun said there was a patient (at the Half-way House in San Lazaro Compound) who was not even a Catholic but requested that he received the Holy Communion before he died. The nun said she and other people in the room prayed for the patient as he breathed his last. She felt happy knowing that they have brought him back to God in his last days.