Underneath All Souls' Day

I never really liked cemeteries. It’s not that I despised them. I simply dislike the sticky feeling of having to visit empty niches, and of smelling rancid body and waste odor – of going to see graves that stir nothing in you, not even mourning.

Let’s just say the first of November, despite the long break, is not my favorite time of the year. And because somebody invented a day to remember the dead, the Filipino people practically stampede over to cemeteries to offer flowers, candles, and food. Not being immunized from traditions such as these, we have to once again travel to the other side of the bay just to place a bunch of flowers on somebody’s grave. It’s not that we believe in praying for the dead. We just want to remember their once existence. That, I also do not get completely. Cemeteries in the Philippines transform into bazaars during this season, which I find pretty ironic for a season that’s supposed to be for the dead. Meters from every cemetery entrance is actually a strip of stalls that sell varieties of food, drinks, inexpensive flowers, and fragile candles; vendors compete with the noise, hollering out their goods to passersby as if they couldn’t sell without telling everyone what was displayed on their tables for the world to see.

“Ma’am, sandwich!”

“’Day, bulak, day!”

“Tubig ka, Ma’am?”

Children come to you and insist that you buy their flimsy candles. “Te, kandila!” they would say simultaneously, elbowing each other, unaware of their runny nose and the soot on their faces.

On our way to Ozamiz, our car slowed down when it passed by a small cemetery. It was not because my dad wanted to pay respect to anyone’s grave. Cemeteries just get too crowded these days, people seem to forget the difference between their road and the cars’. I took the liberty of looking out the window and speculating the stalls people seemed to flock to. Flowers were hastily arranged in either a recycled milk can, or a disposable cup. I was almost convinced they couldn’t sell with the quality of the seven-inch weed-like flowers and ferns, but when I turned my gaze to the people getting in the rusty cemetery gates, most of them were holding the gangly flowers. Maybe I’d venture into this kind of business someday.

The other stalls displayed cotton candy, unripe mango in soy sauce and bagoong, chips, buko juice, and rice cakes – all handled in an unhygienic manner (as if we’re expecting BFAD to make inspections in cemeteries). People didn’t seem to mind though, and I probably wouldn’t mind either if my starvation or my blood pressure wins me over. I withdrew my gaze, reshuffled my playlist, and plugged in my earphones. I knew the cemetery near my grandparents’ house wouldn’t be anything different.

This would probably be the first time we only visited Ozamiz for four hours. It had something to do with our schedule, I believe, or our dogs which we have left at home. I couldn’t tell which.

“Tala, adto na ta sa menteryo,” Mommy said after we lunched on Lola’s special tinolang bisayang manok.  I have just finished washing the dishes when my mom asked my sisters to get two sets of flowers from the store across the road. I laughed when they came back with flowers that resembled the ones I saw on every stall at the cemeteries we had passed by. They were three pathetic-looking, premature white daisies surrounded by splotchy ferns and some kind of grass. Sometimes I wonder if the flowers’ beauty had just been insulted by the way they were being presented. I also didn’t know if the dead would like them if they’d know what kind of flowers they’d be getting.

“Tag-twenty na?” Mommy mouthed her unbelief when my sisters informed her each disposable cup of flowers cost twenty pesos. They could’ve been worth five pesos had it not been the first week of November; we just laughed it off, thinking it doesn’t matter anyway. Still, I could not completely understand why we had to get flowers every time we visit graves. I understand the “remembering” part, but I’m not sure if it’s anywhere near necessary.

I looked over the tiny square that bore my older brother’s name. He was only two months old when God decided it was his time to go. I never really saw him, and his sole (and blurry) two photos only consisted of him wrapped in a piece of blanky. His third photo was of him in a wooden coffin. This is probably the reason why I stare at his name on marble and feel nothing but estranged – unconnected.

After three minutes of staring at the food offered at the neighboring mausoleums, and at families gathered for lunch in the cemetery, the desire to urge my parents to go back home was tugging at me. I readied myself for the words, but my eyes fell on my mom instead, hunched over my older brother’s grave. She had already positioned the flowers, and was now picking pieces of garbage and broken glass strewn over the forgotten niche. My eyes went wide, overwhelmed by the sight of my mother picking up filth with her bare hands, when I barely see her doing dirty chores at home. She’d always been a career woman, spending most of her time on her phone making calls, or her iPad sending emails; her hands had always been clean, soft, and manicured, but this time she was cleaning her own son’s grave, unmindful of bacteria and withstanding the heat.

I wonder what she was thinking.

My eyes didn’t leave her. It was scorching hot and Mommy was just there, staring at the engraved name on the tile of marble. I started crying, feeling sorrowful over everything around me just then. Quickly turning away before anybody could notice, I realized the pain my mom had felt. He was her first-born, and she barely saw him grow. Even though she knows he’s with God right now, she still couldn’t help feeling the pain of loss. If she felt that, despite her belief in ascending to heaven as a victory, how much more would the people who didn’t believe, feel about their loss?

I looked at the plate of cassava offered at the next mausoleum again and the pain flooded, almost tearing my chest in halves. I had been too insensitive and hard to the pains of them who do not know.

The first of November still remains to be my least favorite holiday, but this year’s had apparently been a change of world glasses. My spirit cries for the prayers that fall on deaf ears. For the lopsided candles planted on empty tombs. For the uncared for plates of food offered to spirits. For the lonely families who spend nights on mausoleums. For them. For the lost. And for my unconcern and lack of feeling.