The living will pause from their labors today to recall and render homage to the dead.

Although liturgy has assigned the first day of November as All Saints’ Day, Filipino tradition nevertheless, calls for the people to keep trooping to the cemeteries until the following day, All Souls’ Day.

Cemeteries will be converted into a carnival of lights while the living keeps vigil.

The resting place might be bare brown earth long unmarked, save for a circle of familiar-looking stones that once held up a wooden cross now gone.

Or these could be anywhere God only knows perhaps they are better left that way so that the creativity of one’s imagination might succeed to deaden the pain of the brutal fate they had met.

Or these could be cold cement or marble slabs that hired masons had expertly built in futile, if not vain, effort to preserve their “great leveler” called death.

But whenever they lay, endearing thoughts pierce barriers of barren earth or cement walls in an effort to bring back to life even for just a fleeting moment of joy they who are now gone once shared with us.

On their final homes we shall light up tapers so that the heat of their flame might symbolize the warmth of our undying love to eternal repose to God.

And when we leave their resting place, the sun having set, we will turn around once more to bid them goodbye until the next visit and wishing them rest in peace.