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10/27/2002 Entry: "Trip to the Cemetery"

It's that time of the year again when we Filipinos trek to the cemetery to visit our loved ones. We normally do it on November 1st, but since we have to visit more than one cemetery, we decided to visit the Chinese cemetery this weekend. We thought we were smart by going a week early, but I guess everyone was smart -- or maybe we just all decided to visit the same cemetery today. (I found out Tara and Sheryll's families were there too, among others.) We were a few hundred meters away from the entrance to the Chinese cemetery but the traffic wasn't moving at all, so my aunt, my brother Kris, and I, just decided to walk all the way to my grandparents' "apartment" (took us 20 minutes in the scorching heat). Cemeteries here are broken down into mansions, houses, apartments, and normal spaces, depending on how rich your family is at that time. I guess my grandparents weren't doing that badly, since they got an "apartment". We stayed there for a while, offering flowers, fruits, burning Chinese money and incense. My mom's parents were more traditional, so we honored them this way. I had to explain to my Catholic-schooled niece why we needed to burn money for my grandparents. She emphatically said: "You don't need money in heaven!"

Now that I've grown up, I actually look forward to these events. I like these get togethers with my relatives. We're all there for a common purpose -- to show our appreciation for the people responsible for our existence. We visited my dad's grandparents and great grandparents. Wow, my family's been in the Philippines for a LONG time. I wish I could've seen how they lived. My mom was telling me I have a great granduncle who was a hero during WWII. He was tortured and killed by the Japanese and is buried in that cemetery with his fellow heroes. We were going to visit him too but the kids were complaining already. I'm hoping these kids will learn to appreciate these customs someday as well. I surely want someone visiting me when I'm gone.