Long Live the Dead
Blame it on our fatalist beliefs, but Filipinos aren’t that scared of death. We believe that we die when we’re supposed to, “panahon na niya”, and there’s nothing we can do to prevent when and where. On the day we’re supposed to die, we are where we’re supposed to be. This is how we rationalize sudden death and accidents. Dying from an illness or old age, we have time to prepare though, and we expire when the body’s too tired and the spirit needs to be free.
My family doesn’t go to the cemeteries on Halloween. We visit them on another day, or another month, even. We like to celebrate how they were when they were alive. We talk about our dearly departed often, with fond and often funny memories: how my lola Nina had a boyfriend from every colonizing country that came to our shores (Go lola!), how my lolo Nene would twirl and slow dance with my lola every new year’s eve, my lola Biding’s matching shoes, bags and belts, and my Lolo Didong’s patriotic stories as a general during the war.
I remember how colorful and crazy my departed relatives’ lives were and these are the memories that we come back to. We don’t remember their death, we remember their lives.