The Chieftest Mourner by Aida Rivera-Ford

He was my uncle because he married my aunt (even if he had not come to her these past ten years), so when the
papers brought the news of his death, I felt that some part of me had died, too.
I was boarding then at a big girls college in Manila and I remember quite vividly that a few other girls were gathered
about the lobby of our school, looking very straight and proper since it was seven in the morning and the starch in our
long-sleeved uniform had not yet given way. I tried to be brave while I read that my uncle had actually been the last of a
distinct school of Philippine poets. I was still being brave all the way down the lengthy eulogies, until I got to the line
which said that he was the sweetest lyre that ever throbbed with Malayan chords. Something caught at my throat and I
let out one sobthe rest merely followed. When the girls hurried over to me to see what had happened, I could only point
to the item on the front page with my uncles picture taken when he was still handsome. Everybody suddenly spoke in a
low voice and Ning who worshipped me said that I shouldnt be so unhappy because my uncle was now with the other
great poets in heavenat which I really howled in earnest because my uncle had not only deserted poor Aunt Sophia but
had also been living with another woman these many years and, most horrible of all, he had probably died in her embrace!
Perhaps I received an undue amount of commiseration for the death of the delinquent husband of my aunt, but it
wasnt my fault because I never really lied about anything; only, nobody thought to ask me just how close an uncle he
was. It wasnt my doing either when, some months after his demise, my poem entitled The Rose Was Not So Fair O Alma
Mater was captioned by the niece of the late beloved Filipino Poet. And that having been printed, I couldnt possibly
refuse when I was asked to write on My UncleThe Poetry of His Life. The article, as printed, covered only his boyhood
and early manhood because our adviser cut out everything that happened after he was married. She said that the last half
of his life was not exactly poetic, although I still maintain that in his vices, as in his poetry, he followed closely the pattern
of the great poets he admired.
My aunt used to relate that he was an extremely considerate manwhen he was sober, and on those occasions he
always tried to make up for his past sins. She said that he had never meant to marry, knowing the kind of husband he
would make, but that her beauty drove him out of his right mind. My aunt always forgave him but one day she had more
than she could bear, and when he was really drunk, she tied him to a chair with a strong rope to teach him a lesson. She
never saw him drunk again, for as soon as he was able to, he walked out the door and never came back.
I was very little at that time, but I remembered that shortly after he went away, my aunt put me in a car and sent me
to his hotel with a letter from her. Uncle ushered me into his room very formally and while I looked all around the place,
he prepared a special kind of lemonade for the two of us. I was sorry he poured it out into wee glasses because it was
unlike any lemonade I had ever tasted. While I sipped solemnly at my glass, he inquired after my aunt. To my surprise, I
found myself answering with alacrity. I was happy to report all details of my aunts health, including the number of crabs
she ate for lunch and the amazing fact that she was getting fatter and fatter without the benefit of Scotts Emulsion or
Ovaltine at all. Uncle smiled his beautiful somber smile and drew some poems from his desk. He scribbled a dedication
on them and instructed me to give them to my aunt. I made much show of putting the empty glass down but Uncle was
dense to the hint. At the door, however, he told me that I could have some lemonade every time I came to visit him. Aunt
Sophia was so pleased with the poems that she kissed me. And then all of a sudden she looked at me queerly and made a
most peculiar request of me. She asked me to say ha-ha, and when I said ha-ha, she took me to the sink and began to wash
the inside of my mouth with soap and water while calling upon a dozen of the saints to witness the act. I never got a taste
of Uncles lemonade.
It began to be a habit with Aunt Sophia to drop in for a periodic recital of woe to which Mama was a sympathetic
audience. The topic of the conversation was always the latest low on Uncles state of misery. It gave Aunt Sophia
profound satisfaction to relay the report of friends on the number of creases on Uncles shirt or the appalling decrease in
his weight. To her, the fact that Uncle was getting thinner proved conclusively that he was suffering as a result of the
separation. It looked as if Uncle would not be able to hold much longer, the way he was reported to be thinner each time,
because Uncle didnt have much weight to start with. The paradox of the situation, however, was that Aunt Sophia was
now crowding Mama off the sofa and yet she wasnt looking very happy either.
When I was about eleven, there began to be a difference. Everytime I came into the room when Mama and Aunt
Sophia were holding conference, the talk would suddenly be switched to Spanish. It was about this time that I took an
interest in the Spanish taught in school. It was also at this time that Aunt Sophia exclaimed over my industry at the piano
which stood a short distance from the sofa. At first I couldnt gather much except that Uncle was not any more the main
topic. It was a woman by the name of Esaor so I thought she was called. Later I began to appreciate the subtlety of the
Spanish la mujer esa.
And so I learned about the woman. She was young, accomplished, a woman of means. (A surprising number of
connotations were attached to these terms.) Aunt Sophia, being a loyal wife, grieved that Uncle should have been
ensnared by such a woman, thinking not so much of herself but of his career. Knowing him so well, she was positive that
he was unhappier than ever, for that horrid woman never allowed him to have his own way; she even denied him those
little drinks which he took merely to aid him into poetic composition. Because the woman brazenly followed Uncle
everywhere, calling herself his wife, a confusing situation ensued. When people mentioned Uncles wife, there was no
way of knowing whether they referred to my aunt or to the woman. After a while a system was worked out by the mutual
friends of the different parties. No. 1 came to stand for Aunt Sophia and No. 2 for the woman.
I hadnt seen Uncle since the episode of the lemonade, but one day in school all the girls were asked to come down to
the lecture roomUncle was to read some of his poems! Up in my room, I stopped to fasten a pink ribbon to my hair
thinking the while how I would play my role to perfectionfor the dear niece was to be presented to the uncle she had not
seen for so long. My musings were interrupted, however, when a girl came up and excitedly bubbled that she had seen my
uncleand my aunt, who was surprisingly young and so very modern!
I couldnt go down after all; I was indisposed.
Complicated as the situation was when Uncle was alive, it became more so when he died. I was puzzling over who
was to be the official widow at his funeral when word came that I was to keep Aunt Sophia company at the little chapel
where the service would be held. I concluded with relief that No. 2 had decamped.
The morning wasnt far gone when I arrived at the chapel and there were only a few people present. Aunt Sophia was
sitting in one of the front pews at the right section of the chapel. She had on a black and white print which managed to
display its full yardage over the seat. Across the aisle from her was a very slight woman in her early thirties who was
dressed in a dramatic black outfit with a heavy veil coming up to her forehead. Something about her made me suddenly
aware that Aunt Sophias bag looked paunchy and worn at the corners. I wanted to ask my aunt who she was but after
embracing me when I arrived, she kept her eyes stolidly fixed before her. I directed my gaze in the same direction. At the
front was the presidents immense wreath leaning heavily backward, like that personage himself; and a pace behind, as
though in deference to it, were other wreaths arranged according to the rank and prominence of the people who had sent
them. I suppose protocol had something to do with it.
I tiptoed over to the muse before Uncle as he lay in the dignity of death, the faintest trace of his somber smile still on
his face. My eyes fell upon a cluster of white flowers placed at the foot of the casket. It was ingeniously fashioned in the
shape of a dove and it bore the inscription From the Loyal One. I looked at Aunt Sophia and didnt see anything dove-
like about her. I looked at the slight woman in black and knew of a sudden that she was the woman. A young man,
obviously a brother or a nephew, was bending over her solicitously. I took no notice of him even though he had elegant
manners, a mischievous cowlick, wistful eyes, a Dennis Morgan chin, and a pin which testified that he belonged to what
we girls called our brother college. I showed him that he absolutely did not exist for me, especially when I caught him
looking in our direction.
I always feel guilty of sacrilege everytime I think of it, but there was something grimly ludicrous about my uncles
funeral. There were two women, each taking possession of her portion of the chapel just as though stakes had been laid,
seemingly unmindful of each other, yet revealing by this studied disregard that each was very much aware of the other. As
though to give balance to the scene, the young man stood his full height near the woman to offset the collective bulk of
Aunt Sophia and myself, although I was merely a disproportionate shadow behind her.
The friends of the poet began to come. They paused a long time at the door, surveying the scene before they marched
self-consciously towards the casket. Another pause there, and then they wrenched themselves from the spot and moved
no, slitheredeither towards my aunt or towards the woman. The choice must have been difficult when they knew both.
The women almost invariably came to talk to my aunt whereas most of the men turned to the woman at the left. I
recognized some important Malacaang men and some writers from seeing their pictures in the papers. Later in the
morning a horde of black-clad women, the sisters and cousins of the poet, swept into the chapel and came directly to
where my aunt sat. They had the same deep eye-sockets and hollow cheek-bones which had lent a sensitive expression to
the poets face but which on them suggested t.b. The air became dense with the sickly-sweet smell of many flowers
clashing and I went over to get my breath of air. As I glanced back, I had a crazy surrealist impression of mouths opening
and closing into Aunt Sophias ear, and eyes darting toward the woman at the left. Uncles clan certainly made short work
of my aunt for when I returned, she was sobbing. As though to comfort her, one of the women said, in a whisper which I
heard from the door, that the president himself was expected to come in the afternoon.
Toward lunchtime, it became obvious that neither my aunt nor the woman wished to leave ahead of the other. I could
appreciate my aunts delicadeza in this matter but then got hungry and therefore grew resourceful: I called a taxi and told
her it was at the door with the meter on. Aunt Sophias unwillingness lasted as long as forty centavos.
We made up for leaving ahead of the woman by getting back to the chapel early. For a long time she did not come
and when Uncles kinswomen arrived, I thought their faces showed a little disappointment at finding the left side of the
chapel empty. Aunt Sophia, on the other hand, looked relieved. But at about three, the woman arrived and I perceived at
once that there was a difference in her appearance. She wore the same black dress but her thick hair was now carefully
swept into a regal coil; her skin glowing; her eyes, which had been striking enough, looked even larger. The eyebrows of
the women around me started working and finally, the scrawniest of the poets relations whispered to the others and
slowly, together, they closed in on the woman.
I went over to sit with my aunt who was gazing not so steadily at nothing in particular.
At first the women spoke in whispers, and then the voices rose a trifle. Still, everybody was polite. There was more
talking back and forth, and suddenly the conversation wasnt polite any more. The only good thing about it was that now I
could hear everything distinctly.
So you want to put me in a corner, do you? You think perhaps you can bully me out of here? the woman said.
Shh! Please dont create a scene, the poets sisters said, going one pitch higher.
Its you who are creating a scene. Didnt you come here purposely to start one?
Were only trying to make you see reason. If you think of the dead at all
Lets see who has the reason. I understand that you want me to leave, isnt it? Now that he is dead and cannot speak
for me you think I should quietly hide in a corner? The womans voice was now pitched up for the benefit of the whole
chapel. Let me ask you. During the war when the poet was hard up do you suppose I deserted him? Whose jewels do you
think we sold when he did not make money When he was ill, who was it who stayed at his side Who took care of him
during all those months and who peddled his books and poems to the publishers so that he could pay for the hospital
and doctors bills? Did any of you come to him then? Let me ask you that! Now that he is dead you want me to leave his
side so that you and that vieja can have the honors and have your picture taken with the president. Thats what you want,
isnt itto pose with the president.
Por Dios! Make her stop itsomebody stop her mouth! cried Aunt Sophia, her eyes going up to heaven.
Now you listen, you scandalous woman, one of the clan said, taking it up for Aunt Sophia. We dont care for the
honorswe dont want it for ourselves. But we want the poet to be honored in death to have a decent and respectable
funeral without scandal and the least you can do is to leave him in peace as he lies there.
Yes, the scrawny one said. Youve created enough scandal for him in lifethats why we couldnt go to him when
he was sick because you were there, youyou shameless bitch.
The womans face went livid with shock and rage. She stood wordless while her young protector, his eyes blazing,
came between her and the poets kinswomen. Her face began to twitch. And then the sobs came. Big noisy sobs that
shook her body and spilled the tears down her carefully made-up face. Fitfully, desperately, she tugged at her eyes and
nose with her widows veil. The young man took hold of her shoulders gently to lead her away, but she shook free; and in
a few quick steps she was there before the casket, looking down upon that infinitely sad smile on Uncles face. It may
have been a second that she stood there, but it seemed like a long time.
All right, she blurted, turning about. All right. You can have himall thats left of him!
At that moment before she fled, I saw what I had waited to see. The mascara had indeed run down her cheeks. But
somehow it wasnt funny at all.

This is a short story authored by Aida Rivera Ford. The story is all about the death of the narrator's uncle. It is a
story with a focal point focused on love and innocence in the context of death.

The story simply describes the situation of couples which are not contented with each other and mostly the
husbands found their happiness in other women. It is happening nowadays,maybe because some of the wife did
not do their part to their husbands well. We cannot blame the husbands which often lived with their mistress
because they are longing of care and love. Rights are very important, we do have our own rights and we can
fight for it like what the legal wife did in the story. I realized that even if you gave your very best for a person,
but if you are just a mistress in the end you are still loser. Being a mistress is not really good especially to the
eyes of other people and sometimes people hate them. I therefore conclude that we, women must be the legal
one and must be very lovable to our future husbands so that they will not find another one.

The story all about the man who have wife but find another girl because he want to be more happy to other.
This boy was not contented with her wife. In the ending the second wife give way to first wife.And also the title
of this story was all about the last woman in the funeral who vegelled. The climax of the story is when the two
wife meet in the funeral of their husband. The lesson that I've learned from the story is that we should only one
wife and be contented with one wife.
JEAN-PAUL SARTE

Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (/srtr/;[7] French: [sat]; 21 June 1905 15 April 1980) was a French philosopher,
playwright, novelist, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the key figures in the philosophy
of existentialism and phenomenology, and one of the leading figures in 20th-century French philosophy and Marxism.
His work has also ifluenced sociology, critical theory, post-colonial theory, and literary studies, and continues to influence
these disciplines.
Sartre was also noted for his open relationship with prominent feminist and fellow existentialist philosopher and
writer Simone de Beauvoir. Together, Sartre and de Beauvoir challenged the cultural and social assumptions and
expectations of their upbringings, which they considered bourgeois, in both lifestyle and thought. The conflict between
oppressive, spiritually destructive conformity (mauvaise foi, literally, "bad faith") and an "authentic" way of "being"
became the dominant theme of Sartre's early work, a theme embodied in his principal philosophical work Being and
Nothingness (L'tre et le Nant, 1943).[8] Sartre's introduction to his philosophy is his work Existentialism and
Humanism (L'existentialisme est un humanisme, 1946), originally presented as a lecture.
He was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature but refused it, saying that he always declined official honours and that
"a writer should not allow himself to be turned into an institution".[9]

An important feature of Sartre's phenomenological work is that his ultimate interest in carrying out
phenomenological analyses is an ethical one. Through them, he opposes the view, which is for instance that of
the Freudian theory of the unconscious, that there are psychological factors that are beyond the grasp of our
consciousness and thus are potential excuses for certain forms of behaviour.

Starting with Sartre's account of the ego, this is characterised by the claim that it is produced by, rather than
prior to consciousness. As a result, accounts of agency cannot appeal to a pre-existing ego to explain certain
forms of behaviour. Rather, conscious acts are spontaneous, and since all pre-reflective consciousness is
transparent to itself, the agent is fully responsible for them (and a fortiori for his ego). In Sartre's analysis of
emotions, affective consciousness is a form of pre-reflective consciousness, and is therefore spontaneous and
self-conscious. Against traditional views of the emotions as involving the subject's passivity, Sartre can
therefore claim that the agent is responsible for the pre-reflective transformation of his consciousness through
emotion. In the case of the imaginary, the traditional view of the power of fancy to overcome rational thought is
replaced by one of imaginary consciousness as a form of pre-reflective consciousness. As such, it is therefore
again the result of the spontaneity of consciousness and involves self-conscious states of mind. An individual is
therefore fully responsible for his imaginations's activity. In all three cases, a key factor in Sartre's account is his
notion of the spontaneity of consciousness. To dispel the apparent counter-intuitiveness of the claims that
emotional states and flights of imagination are active, and thus to provide an account that does justice to the
phenomenology of these states, spontaneity must be clearly distinguished from a voluntary act. A voluntary act
involves reflective consciousness that is connected with the will; spontaneity is a feature of pre-reflective
consciousness.

Sartre was a moralist but scarcely a moralizer. His earliest studies, though phenomenological, underscored the
freedom and by implication the responsibility of the practitioner of the phenomenological method. Thus his first
major work, Transcendence of the Ego, in addition to constituting an argument against the transcendental ego
(the epistemological subject that cannot be an object) central to German idealism and Hussserlian
phenomenology, introduces an ethical dimension into what was traditionally an epistemological project by
asserting that this appeal to a transcendental ego conceals a conscious flight from freedom. The
phenomenological reduction that constitutes the objects of consciousness as pure meanings or significations
devoid of the existential claims that render them liable to skeptical doubt-such a reduction or bracketing of the
being question carries a moral significance as well. The authentic subject, as Sartre will later explain in
his Notebooks for an Ethics, will learn to live without an ego, whether transcendental or empirical, in the sense
that the transcendental ego is superfluous and the empirical ego (of scientific psychology) is an object for
consciousness when it reflects on itself in an objectifying act that he calls accessory reflection. His works take
pains either to ascribe moral responsibility to agents individually or collectively or to set the ontological
foundations for such ascriptions.

Authenticity is achieved, Sartre claims, by a conversion that entails abandonment of our original choice to
coincide with ourselves consciously (the futile desire to be in-itself-for-itself or God) and thereby free ourselves
from identification with our egos as being-in-itself. In our present alienated condition, we are responsible for
our egos as we are for any object of consciousness. Earlier he said that it was bad faith (self-deception)to try to
coincide with our egos since the fact is that whatever we are we are in the manner of not being it due to the
othering nature of consciousness. Now his mention of conversion to authenticity via a purifying(non-
objectifying) reflection elaborates that authentic project. He insists that we must allow our spontaneous
selfness (what he terms ipseity here and in Being and Nothingness) to replace the Me or Ego, which he
criticizes as an abusive intermediary whose future prefigures my future. The shift is from relations of
appropriation or being where I focus on identifying with my ego in a bad-faith flight from freedom,to
relations of existence and autonomy where I attend entirely to my project and its goal. The former is egoistic,
Sartre now implies, where the latter is outgoing and generous. This resonates with what he will say about the
creative artist's work as a gift, an appeal to another freedom and an act of generosity.

It is now common to distinguish three distinct ethical positions in Sartre's writings. The first and best known,
existentialist ethics is one of disalienation and authenticity. It assumes that we live in a society of oppression
and exploitation. The former is primary and personal, the latter structural and impersonal. While he enters into
extended polemics in various essays and journal articles of the late 1940s and 50s concerning the systematic
exploitation of people in capitalist and colonialist institutions, Sartre always sought a way to bring the
responsibility home to individuals who could in principle be named. As Merleau-Ponty observed, Sartre
stressed oppression over exploitation, individual moral responsibility over structural causation but without
denying the importance of the latter. In fact, as his concept of freedom thickened from the ontological to the
social and historical in the mid 40s, his appreciation of the influence of factical conditions in the exercise of
freedom grew apace.

Sartre's concept of authenticity, occasionally cited as the only existentialist virtue, is often criticized as
denoting more a style than a content. Admittedly, it does seem compatible with a wide variety of life choices.
Its foundation, again, is ontological-the basic ambiguity of human reality that is what it is not (that is, its
future as possibility) and is not what it is (its past as facticity, including its ego or self, to which we have seen
it is related via an internal negation). We could say that authenticity is fundamentally living this ontological
truth of one's situation, namely, that one is never identical with one's current state but remains responsible for
sustaining it. Thus, the claim that's just the way I am would constitute a form of self-deception or bad faith as
would all forms of determinism, since both instances involve lying to oneself about the ontological fact of one's
nonself-coincidence and the flight from concomitant responsibility for choosing to remain that way.

Given the fundamental division of the human situation into facticity and transcendence, bad faith or
inauthenticity can assume two principal forms: one that denies the freedom or transcendence component (I
can't do anything about it) and the other that ignores the factical dimension of every situation (I can do
anything by just wishing it). The former is the more prevalent form of self deception but the latter is common
to people who lack a sense of the real in their lives.

Sartre sometimes talks as if any choice could be authentic so long as it is lived with a clear awareness of its
contingency and responsibility. But his considered opinion excludes choices that oppress or consciously exploit
others. In other words, authenticity is not entirely style; there is a general content and that content is freedom.
Thus the authentic Nazi is explicitly disqualified as being oxymoronic. Sartre's thesis is that freedom is the
implicit object of any choice, a claim he makes but does not adequately defend in his Humanism lecture. He
seems to assume that freedom is the aspect under which any choice is made, its formal object, to revive an
ancient term. But a stronger argument than that would be required to disqualify an authentic Nazi.
Though critical of its bourgeois variety, Sartre does support an existentialist humanism, the motto of which
could well be his remark that you can always make something out of what you've been made into
(Situations 9:101). In fact, his entire career could be summarized in these words that carry an ethical as well as a
critical message. The first part of his professional life focused on the freedom of the existential individual (you
can always make something out of); the second concentrated on the socioeconomic and historical conditions
which limited and modified that freedom (what you've been made into), once freedom ceased to be merely the
definition of man and included the possibility of genuine options in concrete situations. That phase
corresponded to Sartre's political commitment and active involvement in public debates, always in search of the
exploitative systems such as capitalism, colonialism and racism at work in society and the oppressive
practices of individuals who sustained them. As he grew more cognizant of the social dimension of individual
life, the political and the ethical tended to coalesce. In fact, he explicitly rejected Machiavellianism.

If Sartre's first and best known ethics corresponds to the ontology of Being and Nothingness, his second,
dialectical ethics builds on the philosophy of history developed in the Critique of Dialectical Reason. In a
series of posthumously published notes for lectures in the 1960s, some of which were never delivered, Sartre
sketched a theory of ethics based on the concepts of human need and the ideal of integral man in contrast with
its counter-concept, the subhuman.What this adds to his published ethics is a more specific content and a
keener sense of the social conditions for living a properly human life.

Sartre's third attempt at an ethics, which he called an ethics of the we, was undertaken in interview format
with his secretary, Benny Lvy, toward the end of his life. It purports to question many of the main propositions
of his ethics of authenticity, yet what has appeared in print chiefly elaborates claims already stated in his earlier
works. But since the tapes on which these remarks were recorded are unavailable to the public and Sartre's
illness at the time they were made was serious, their authority as revisionary of his general philosophy remains
doubtful. If ever released in its entirety, this text will constitute a serious hermeneutical challenge.

Bad faith (from French mauvaise foi) is a philosophical concept used by existentialist philosophers Jean-
Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir to describe the phenomenon where human beings under pressure from
social forces adopt false values and disown their innate freedom, hence acting inauthentically.

Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.
When the rich wage war it's the poor who die.
Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.
If you are lonely when you are alone, you are in bad company.
Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance.
Everything has been figured out, except how to live.
Only the guy who isn't rowing has time to rock the boat.
Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.
Like all dreamers, I mistook disenchantment for truth.
Life begins on the other side of despair.

existentialism
a philosophical theory or approach that emphasizes the existence of the individual person as a free and
responsible agent determining their own development through acts of the will.