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Remembering the dead and other grave concerns
When I was on a pensive mood beside my father’s grave on a pre-All Souls Day visit my mother casually asked me about my own burial preferences and plans.
“Cremation, Ma,” I told her as casually and jokingly added “I’d like to rest in peace in an urn stashed in some small crypt to save real estate space.”
“Where will this crypt be?” she asked, still very seriously.
“I don’t know. That would depend on where my wife wants my ashes interred,” I answered blankly.
My mother wants these details known. She wishes to be able to pray for me when I’m dead and pay small tributes before my tomb.
My mother (who thinks she’d grow to be a hundred years old) said someone must live long enough to pray for those who have gone ahead. Praying for the dead is her way of paying homage to a life well lived, as much as it is a tool to rescue souls. In this day and age where people pray less (let alone pray for the dead) my mother believes her faithful persistence “could be the only hope of deliverance of souls languishing in purgatory.”
That’s why she makes rounds of cemeteries every year, visiting the graves not just of relatives but of all the dead people she knows. I have been her dutiful driver on these cemetery tours since I learned how to drive, accompanying her in visiting as many graves as time, weather and parking space permit.
On top of the usual candle, flower and prayer offering, she would take time to have masses said for the dead. A list of the dead is “submitted” to church days before All Souls Day. Fresh prayers and masses are Mama’s way of reinforcing the already “perpetual” novena masses for the dead, as vouched by mass cards offered during the wake.
And it’s a serious clerical operation.
Before All Souls Day Mama would bring home prayer-for-the-dead envelopes from St. Clement’s Church or the Jaro Cathedral. These are systematically filled with names of all the dead she could remember. On the face of the envelope are about a dozen blanks good for about a dozen dead peoples’ names but my mother, with the sheer number of goners she knows, would add more blanks. Sometimes even the sides and corners of the envelopes are filled with names before they are sealed and slipped into a “drop box” in church.
Her list (which keeps getting longer as time goes by) would include all our dead relatives and friends, as well as the dead relatives and friends of living and dead relatives and friends. It’s really short of praying for everyone who died, if only my mother was not required to at least be specific.
Through the years, Mama made mental notes of deaths as she would of birthdays. She is a walking almanac for me, which helps with my frequent senior moments. Mama’s infallible memory when it comes to death, wedding anniversaries and birthdays is still the next best thing to Google. Apart from names of the dead or their dates of death, she would also know the exact spot where they are buried as though she had GPS implanted in her brain, the next best thing to Google Earth!
I used to trivialize the All Souls Day regimen of my mother when I was younger. I wondered why we can’t be just like everyone else who held picnics in one cemetery all day, instead of making insanely brief, solemn visits to the dead scattered all over the city and beyond.
But after years of driving Mama during All Souls Day and spending a few moments of silence by the graveyards, it dawned on me that these visits are actually “mini honors” for those who have moved along. By being “physically there” I am “forced” to think about the dead person’s life and times, accidentally paying small “mental” tributes that usually end in short heartfelt prayers. It is not an exercise in futility after all, as I leave the grave thankful that my own life has been touched by friends and loved ones passed.
Remembering a kind deed of a dead uncle… the spirit-filled laughter of a classmate lost to cancer… or the generosity of a grandmother’s sister. I just become grateful.
Austrian contemporary writer Hermann Broch wrote, “No one’s death comes to pass without making some impression, and those close to the deceased inherit part of the liberated soul and become richer in their humanness.”
Mama in the intricacy of her All Souls Day rituals, is just assuring her friends and loved ones that for as long as she is alive, someone would be there not just to pray for their deliverance in case they’re stuck in limbo. She has made it her life’s mission to make graveyard trips, offer flowers, light candles, say prayers and celebrate the departed’s life, long after everyone else has ceased to remember.
Such is her gift, her promise to loved ones and friends who may be bringing to the grave, the greater fear of being forgotten.
