Graveyard Moments, Too

Click to read my previous post
"Graveyard Moments"

I have friends and relatives who no longer go to the cemetery on All Saints' Day. They have their reasons, and I respect their decision. But I think the tradition we follow on this feast -- visiting graves, offering flowers, lighting candles, saying prayers -- is both beautiful and meaningful.

It's true that the tombs only contain decaying or already decayed bodies -- sometimes not even that. It's true that the souls have long gone to heaven or purgatory -- hopefully, not elsewhere. And it's also true that the living can remember the dead even without going to the cemetery. Still, I find it meaningful to visit the burial grounds of our loved ones at least once a year -- to read and reread their names, to recall the dates of their birth and death, to remember how they lived and died.

It makes sense that we remember our loved ones who have died even without visiting their graves. But what about those family members whom we never got a chance to meet -- those whom we never knew in person but who are part of our personal history?

Bishop Luis Antonio Tagle (now the Archbishop of Manila) once narrated that most of his relatives are now abroad and how sad it was that, when the "young ones" in his family visit the cemetery, they no longer know or remember the dead they are visiting. 

I for one never got to know my paternal grandfather and maternal grandparents. On both sides I have relatives I never had the chance to meet. Visiting their tombs, offering them flowers, lighting candles for them, saying a prayer for their souls ... These are all I can do to thank them for helping to make me who I am today.

In a sense, All Saints' Day is like a big family reunion, a unique occasion for passing on family history. When we "tomb hop," we not only remember those who have died but also reach out to the living. We recall our common roots and reconnect with those like us who were left behind. We keep our shared memories alive. And right there, among the tombs of the dead, we celebrate life.

Graveyard Moments

About a year ago today, I read Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book. It's a strange but enchanting story about a boy who was raised by ghosts in a graveyard after his family was murdered. It's a rather sad tale, really. A story about being alone, longing to fit in and searching for something (or someone). It's also about loving and losing, letting go and moving on.

It must have been an aftereffect of reading The Graveyard Book that, for some reason, I found myself wanting to linger a bit longer at the cemetery on All Saints' Day. I wondered how old our town cemetery was and what kind of secrets its tombs held.

Somehow, the ghost characters in the book reminded me that the corpses buried in those tombs were once "real" people who laughed and cried, sang and danced, breathed and lived. Yet no matter how much they were loved or hated, no matter how much their death was mourned over, their memory fades as the years pass. In time, their graves and tomb markers are all that will remain, reminding the living that -- for a short while -- so and so once walked on this earth.

In about a week, on All Saints' Day, I will be going back to that cemetery. The old headstones with now-familiar names are bound to be there still. But for sure, there will be fresh ones on which new names are engraved. I hope I remember to mention those names in a whispered prayer as I pass by. And I hope you do, too -- in memory of our fellow travelers, who just happened to have gone on ahead of us.

Go to Graveyard Moments, Too