November 5, 2019
by: Alpheus Llantero
It’s the day after Halloween, but not like there were jack-o-lanterns or cobwebs on porches or on window sills. A parol is already hung, lights are strung and spell out Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays; that day is three months in the making. The roads are empty, the shops are closed, and only ghosts inhabit the city. In a sense, that’s what these two days are about – ghosts. On Halloween we run away from ghosts. On Undas we run toward them, like we did for Lolo picking us up from school, or Lola plopping a hot dish of miki guisado on the table for dinner. We sit at the table with the tita whose name we unfortunately don’t remember at the tip of our tongues but whose bibingka, embutido, or longganisa we miss so dearly. There’s an offering at the altar, their favorite breakfast of peanut butter and toast and coffee, untouched for the morning, but the surest reminder they are still with us today.
Maybe you don’t believe in a god or a higher power or the existence of a soul. Maybe when we die we don’t roam the earth or go to heaven or reincarnate. Maybe when we are buried and the earth shall subsume our body and our matter is merely transformed towards the elements encompassing our bones. From stardust we came, and to the stars we shall return. That is what we can say with certainty. We are mortal, we will one day die. For at least two days a year, we look at the pictures of those we loved so dearly, their fate surely staring us in the face – one day we shall join them, in the sky or in the earth.
Death is sad. We grew up with these people, they made us who we are, for better or for worse. That is why Filipino Catholics spend 40 solemn days praying after a loved one dies, with the hope that their soul may rest easy. Death is hard. That is why these 40 days bring together family and friends and even those with the briefest of interactions with the now-dead. A death is a community’s death – not a community’s extinction because life goes on after death – but a community’s loss. For a culture that is so interdependent, so reliant on a principle called kapwa, as father of Filipino Psychology Virgilio Enriquez defines as hindi-ibang-tao or “one of us”, death is the loss of that one part of us.
Come All Saints and All Souls Day, any foreigner would be surprised to see tents at the cemetery, on the graves of the departed, speakers blasting Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You”, a whole buffet, titos clinking their San Mig Lights, and kids playing luksong baka. A whole party, one could say. These two days are meant for the best days of our departed. Every single dad joke they made, their little mannerisms of maybe waving hello, their oft-repeated catchphrases enter our memory once again. These two days aren’t as much a celebration of the dead but a celebration of the living. For us, the living, we are conferred the responsibility, the expectation, that the dead leave us with. Whoever they were and how ever the dead lived, we ought to remember their best, we ought to live out their best.
Filipino-Americans are far away from the motherland. Home can mean many things. Maybe you might consider your home as New Jersey or maybe you consider your home as the Philippines. Wherever you think of home, your blood points to your ancestors. Your blood is composed of their sacrifice. There’s a reason you are here, and that is because of them. Your ancestors migrated or sent their descendants to the United States because they were forced to, as most Filipinos across the archipelago suffer a fate worse than death – hungry and homeless – isang kahig, isang tuka. You are here because your ancestors did not want you to suffer that fate, because your ancestors believed America was an escape. But here in America your still your ancestors suffered; they toiled the hot sugarcane plantations of Hawai’i, endured the worst of the race riots in California, or abused as nurses in the Northeast.
You are a product of your ancestors sacrifices. You are a product of their food, their laughter, their values and principles. Remember where you come from.
In memory of Lola Nenita Llantero, Lolo Tranquilino Llantero, and Lola Linda Fontanares. I miss the farm and the garden for where I was raised. I miss their hugs. I miss their food. They always told me that they are proud of me. You are always in my memory.
Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.
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