Death as a Dawning

This year, I went home for All Saints’ Day. How fast one whole year has gone by! I still remember that of last year: one reason I went home for All Saints’ Day was to drive for my parents in our visit to the tombs of our beloved departed. Through the years, we have been visiting mainly two cemeteries—San Miguel, Tarlac City and Bamban, Tarlac. My grandparents are buried in these cemeteries—paternal grandparents at the former (although now their remains have been transferred to San Sebastian, also in Tarlac City) and maternal grandparents at the latter. Since I became a priest, it was an added feature for me to bring holy water and bless not only their tombs but also those of the other relatives.

It was not part of our usual itinerary, but at last year’s All Saints’ Day we thought of passing by Murcia, Concepcion (where my father was born and grew up) to bring some of the things that my sister had sent to our relatives there. We arrived at past nine in the morning and saw my cousins and their father, Uncle Jesus, the husband of my aunt (my father’s elder sister) in tears. Earlier they had rushed my aunt, Pastora (Auntie Paring), to the hospital and at 8:00am, she was pronounced dead on arrival due to cardiac arrest. She was 85. My father was in tears. Though she was weak, we have not expected her to depart this soon.

Uncle Jesus sobbingly was saying in Kapampangan: “Penenayan ne mu rugu ing daun.” (“She seemed to have just waited for All Saints’ Day.”) And he was relating how Auntie Paring was so strong the evening before, that she was even talking so clearly. (Incidentally, some months later, Uncle Jesus would also go back to the Father and join Auntie Paring.)

Later that day, we went to Bamban (before going back to Murcia to see my aunt’s body already in the coffin) and our maternal relatives were also recounting the same thing when years ago, the wife of my uncle died—in a moment of physical strength she asked that she be brought out to see the house.

A common denominator in both events was a moment of strength before the coming of death. It makes me reflect on the fact that we really will decide to embrace death when it would come before us. And I do believe that what gives the dying that strength before they breathe their last is not only the satisfaction of having lived their life the best they could, but also the imminent entrance into another life, the other life. In the many funeral masses I have presided I always tell the people something I read from a magazine: “Death is not extinguishing the flame but putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.” Aye, death is a dawning and this dawning gives us reason to pray, to celebrate both All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day.