We plunder gardens to get flowers and we again gather around graves to light candles. We paint the crosses that mark the tombstones of our loved ones and we pinch the cheeks of the solitary angels by painting their faces as they hover over the final destiny of those who have gone ahead of us.
It is the day for and of the Dead and we who are alive are running about to remember ourselves remember them.
The lyricism of the day or the days when we troop to cemeteries begins and ends with the graves and the memories that we allow ourselves. Away from the grave, and when we stop to think of those whose corpses are found underneath, the observance of All Souls' Day and All Saints' Day, two festivals conflated as one as if we mix holiness with passing away, is really about ourselves.
I remember the first time I heard of memorial parks. A friend of the family came over to the house. He was the son of the friend of my grandfather. He came to introduce himself as the head of an insurance company that also assured people that there would be assistance when the time of bereavement came. The man also happened to be a poet, or, at least, at that point, someone who used to be interested in poetry. Otherwise, he would not have joined a firm that found certainty in the times of grief and was too sure about the preparation regarding death.
Death is the ultimate poetry, and the uncertainty about it is not only natural; it makes us human. Like good poetry.
Anyway, a few years from that visit, so-called memorial parks sprouted like living signs about the commerce of death. That birth of memorial parks and memorial plots spelled also the death of cemeteries.
Cemeteries used to be part of the planned spaces of the town or city. It was planned insofar as it was part of the geography of the place. Its plan, however, stopped there in its location. Cemeteries did not plan for dying. It was there for death that, for a long time, remained one of those phenomena families never talked about.
In my hometown, San Fernando, in the island of Ticao, there was only one cemetery. I did not know it was a Catholic cemetery, until I witnessed the funeral of man who committed a suicide. He was not allowed to be buried in the cemetery that we knew; his body was placed outside the wall of that ancient repository. He was buried in the Cementerio Civil.
It was a forlorn place, even now. No one, I believe, ever wanted to be buried there. The plot in that cemetery outside the blessed final resting place appeared to be a default site for those whose death was sinful or tabooed enough for them to be allowed in the regular cemetery.
The presence of memorial parks indicates something else. It says something about the rugged shift in our attitude to dying. Suddenly, we are given the opportunity to plan the activities near, around and during our death. Dying, as an act, joins other matters that can involve hectic planning, like a grand wedding or a multi-sponsored baptism. That which Nature and Faith perhaps never thought of giving us a control of before is now part of our controllable territory.
A few savings here and there and we have the poetry of death transformed into a prose of efficient and smooth planning.
When it was not allowed to talk about one's dying, with memorial parks came memorial plans that necessitated that we formalize our death plans. What kind of coffins or vessels can we save for? How graciously voluminous shall the flowers be? Will there be balloons or butterflies to signify our release from the valley of tears? What song can be played as the box with the right lining and gilding and negotiated price is lowered?
Saints or Souls, we troop each year to cemeteries or memorial parks. We painstakingly assemble wreaths and flowers and we spend our money on candles that either bear the face of the Redeemer or the rarest orchids. Families consult members about the dishes to be displayed and to be shared. It is no more faith than it is fiesta for all of us left here to fend against floods and other calamities.
Those whose graves we light would not really care for the candles. They would not smell the flowers nor feel the love that we announce for them that day. I like to believe that they are looking down upon us, amused at our acts and wondering what we are doing there at all, in front of that mound that shelters nothing but bones and bones and bones.
Which brings me to my personal agenda. When my time comes, I hope my ashes will be thrown deep in Ticao Sea. No ritual and no farewell. No markers and no grave. If my loved ones want to visit me, I am there, fair enough, in their memories, and, away from commerce, in their heart.