Death takes us by surprise
And stays our hurrying feet;
The great design unfinished lies,
Our lives are incomplete.

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

4:00 a.m. on All Souls’ Day, November 2, a day for remembering and honoring the loved ones we lost, as prescribed by the Catholic church. There are other days and reasons for doing this, as any day can be one of remembrance, but today has been officially designated for prayers for those referred to as our “faithful departed” and for offering Masses.

In a sane and logical world, my son should be the one offering prayers for me. Instead its me who shall pray for him. No, that’s not right either. He doesn’t need our prayers as he died before reaching what is considered “the age of accountability” and therefore, by Catholic doctrine, died in a state of grace and went straight to heaven. He was just six years old, a few weeks short of his 7th birthday, and would have been a teenager by now. I will go to early Mass and then visit his grave with his mother and sisters. Prayers will be said, but more for our sake, those he left behind.

We miss him so much, and the years have not dulled the pain of loss. The grief becomes sharper on days like this. He was the center of our lives. On my side of the family, out of thirteen grandchildren (and more on the way), he was the only boy. And so I feel, like many a grieving parent, stripped of my past and robbed of my future. Read the rest of this entry »

What man shall live and not see death ?

– Proverbs 89:49

Today is All Saints’ Day, a Catholic feast day or solemnity, intended to honor the saints or martyrs of the faith. It is celebrated every 1st of November and is an official public holiday in the Philippines, a country that prides itself in being the only predominantly Catholic country in Asia, whatever that means. It possibly implies that we as have one leg up on salvation compared to our neighbors. But this is a highly debatable point and I digress.

However, All Saints’ Day in the Philippines is not for celebrating and emulating the saints of the Church but rather for honoring our departed loved ones, friends and family, and is an occasion for family reunions and, at times rather inappropriately, unruly revelry. We have it confused with All Souls’ Day, November 2, which is the day set for prayers and remembering our faithful departed. It doesn’t matter. Any excuse for a holiday is as good as any in this country. This year, we look forward to a 4-day weekend as Friday, November 2,ordinarily a working day, has been declared a special holiday.

As I heard it expressed more than once, it’s a sort of a family roll call before the enforced gaiety of the Christmas season. In some families, those who don’t show up had better have a good excuse or they won’t get any gifts in the coming holidays.

The eve of All Saints’ Day being Halloween, an American tradition increasingly gaining ground in the Philippines, specially in the more affluent communities of the urban areas, some have started carousing the night before. In fact, Halloween or not, those honoring their dead often spent the night before November 1 in the cemetery, eating, drinking, gambling, singing and sometimes fighting. Violently enough to add to the permanent population of the cemetery. Thus, in recent years, alcoholic beverages, weapons and karaoke and videoke machines have been banned from the premises. Cops and bomb-sniffing dogs are all around the place, what with the threat of terrorism of the non-Halloween kind. All Saints’ Day has therefore been recently characterized by more solemnity than I had been used to.

On this day every year, at least (not counting Ash Wednesday and Good Friday), Filipino Catholics are forced to confront their own mortality. And what do they do ? They make it a fiesta and grab the chance to catch up on gossip.

I don’t know whether this is good or bad; whether its a form of denial or it’s a healthy way of relating to death, as just another part of life. I suspect it’s the latter. With recent events being what they are, death has been very much at the foreground of most Pinoys’ minds, whether here or abroad. You go to the mall, even an upscale one, and you get blasted to bits by a clogged septic tank and/or faulty design, construction and maintenance. With malls like the ones run by the Ayala corporations, who needs Al-Qaeda, Jamaya Islamiya or the Abu Sayyaf Group ? One votes at the recent barangay elections and may be beaten up or shot in the process. Death, specially the sudden kind, is really part of the Filipino experience.

“Hora incerta, Mors Certa.”

– Hour Uncertain, Death Certain. Read the rest of this entry »