The news is out: cemeteries and memorial parks will be closed to living human beings. Finally, the resting place for the Dead will be exclusively owned by those who have gone ahead of us.
In the early days following the lockdown, I saw people lingering a bit longer in memorial parks. I was one of them, visiting my own parents, grandparents, a dear aunt, and a brother. Always, when I plan to be there, there is always a heaviness in my heart because I know the proximity of their graves will seal once more the thought they are gone. But, always, always, when I get there, that thud on my chest dissipates and those tombstones turn into the friendliest of memories.
Those slabs, those concrete we clean, even wipe with our own handkerchiefs to signify these stone structures are the most delicate of the repositories, are there for us. They are our guide to an ever-expanding map of people who are not here anymore. They are not for the dead; they are for the living.
The language for Death is also the language of Life. These vocabularies related to people passing on are also the cognitive terms for those who are left behind. Thus, when a person dies, not even one’s love or vow to remember that person can erase the fact that what we are mourning for are the remains of that person.
The obituaries are very clear about death: the ones written about those who are dead by the time the literature about them is released constitute the declaration regarding another person being gone. No one writes or speaks a eulogy with the thought that the person for whom the outpouring of emotions and intellections is effected will come back again.
The certainty of death more than makes up for the insecurity and random beauty of life. Shouldn’t we be happy then about Death?
We cannot be celebrating death as it happens, but in memorial parks and in cemeteries, the Filipinos certainly have put into good practice the theology that Death is merely transitory. And in that fissure of the illusion called life, we can remember our loved ones and have fun.
But as we have opted to declare the places for remembering the Dead and the Sainted on those days meant for them, we shall be missing the celebratory artefacts we all have gotten used to. And they are an interesting lot.
We will not be listening to radio programs blaring about OPLAN Kaluluwa. I am overthinking perhaps but, for the first rare time, the mass media has hit a jackpot with their articulation of the Day of the Dead. Indeed, those graves and niches carry bodies, most of them rotting but we’d rather not think of them that way. The days from the end of October till the first week of November are for the Unseen, the Ghost.
In rural Philippines, there used to be “Pangaluluwa,” our own version of trick or treat although in a more adult version. Slippers, which are precious commodities in farming communities or villages are lost, only to reappear in unlikely places, like atop the dung heap of the carabao; bamboo stairs detachable of course as they are attached to the house by way of rattan vines are stolen! And sometimes never returned. The more enterprising “ghost” steals eggs or even the hen that lays the eggs.
The entrepreneurial spirit of the witching hours extends to women, shrouded in black,—the scariest sight a childhood can ever be traumatized by—as they mourn and moan in front of the gates of homes, their voices uncannily sounding similar to the tones of the cranky novena-praying old women in the church, only this time their keening seems to come from the bowels of the devil’s lair. They ask for donation, pleading the cases of the souls in Purgatory, never mind those in Hell.
Lately in more urbanized memorial parks, the days for remembering the dead have taken a more capitalist and absurdist turn. Hotdog stands outnumber the stalls selling candles; pizza seems to be the favored delicacy for memorializing. In our city, somebody had started a rock concert beneath a gazebo and it had always been like that—a local rendering of the Oktoberfest with a touch of a deranged costume ball.
I shall miss this time our increasing obsession with Halloween. Last year, I encountered an afternoon procession of little children from a local nursery—most were wearing blinking red horns. As the frisky little ones needed coordinating, the parents were there also, in regular dresses and irregular faces made up to look cracked and bleeding. At the head of this carnivalesque approach to Death was the teacher costumed as the Nun from Hell. In another period, that teacher would have been hanged for witchcraft.
It was last week, in anticipation of the grand lockdown for remembering, that I visited the memorial park where most of my loved ones are interred. I knew what to pray: short prayers and the usual wish to grant them eternal rest while allowing the perpetual light to shine upon them. There were candles as far as the eye could see and small groups huddled against each other. Above us, the clouds were gray, darkening even with streaks of light—wise, wonderful epitaphs to life, not death.
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