ALL SOULS DAY

Appreciating Cemeteries

IT’S another All Soul’s Day. And as our faith and tradition dictate, we are again trooping to the cemetery to honor the dead and our dearly departed. 

For many people perhaps this resting place is one eerie place during ordinary days--when white mists seem to float in the dark night air, and the round reddish moon illuminates the white painted tombstones. The spookiness of the place is one scary sight. 

It may sound strange, but the cemetery means different things to me--a tranquil resting place, a vast playground, a refuge, and more. Of course, this mindset has something to do with the fact that our family house in San Jose, Santa Rita, Pampanga where I grew up is very much adjacent to our town’s cemetery. So near that from fence to fence, the distance is measured at less than ten meters. That probably explains why I can be comfortable inside it and have actually become so used to its “eeriness.”

Fact is, I have a lot to thank this cemetery for. In my childhood, it served as a vast playground for my playmates and I. Here was where we flew kites in the afternoon when the wind was favorable, where we ran for cover, while playing hide and seek, where we gave vent to our surplus energy as kids, climbing its high fences and hopping from one tombstone to another while chasing each other. 

I remember too, that whenever a funeral was held, we would position ourselves atop tombs and made sure we had a good view of the deceased inside the coffin, and the wailing and weeping relatives. And mind you, we even commiserated with those who fainted while the coffin was being lowered into the grave. I would say, it was that exposure to funerals that taught me about the inevitability of leaving this world and the sadness of being left behind. 

In 1993, this same cemetery saved our homes from being completely wiped out and buried in fifteen feet deep steaming lahar. Its high fences served as our community’s fortress, which prevented lahar from flowing into our neighborhood, sparing us from further damage. 

Today, I have all the more reason to go and visit the cemetery, as it just recently embraced to its fold, my own parents. They are now under its care. 

Good for me and the rest of our family, we need not travel far and brave the heavy traffic (as people from the city have to endure to get to the cemetery where their dearly beloved departed are resting). All I have to do is to climb its not-so-high fence now to get inside. Or if I can’t climb that fence anymore I still can look out from my bedroom’s window and from there see where my parents' physical bodies now lie in eternal peace in preparation for the resurrection as promised by our Lord Jesus Christ!

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