Flowers for the dead

By Rhona Canoy

SO… All Souls’ Day just passed. Our yearly tradition of paying tribute and remembering our dead. It raises mixed emotions in me, especially now that my mom has passed. The festive atmosphere that our cemeteries exhibit is both sad and puzzling, if we were to really think about it.

My mama had this sense of duty to regularly place flowers at the graves of our departed family members. Each week, there would always be a fresh bouquet or arrangement brought to the graves, placed with much affection. I could always tell which graves had some special occasion remembered, because of the random spots of color dotting the landscape. The contrast between graves on a regular day and on All Souls’ Day is a bit overwhelming. On Nov. 1 of each year, blooms begin to appear, getting more dense as the day goes on, until Nov. 2 when the communities for the dead look like a prolific botanical garden.

It disturbs me that we go all out for this yearly “holiday” and so willingly spend lots of money on the floral arrangements. Granted, the flower vendors look forward to this, because they can make a good living. Flowers double in price, sometimes triple because of the demand. Just like Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day—the two famous celebrations created or popularized by Hallmark. The thing is, I’ve seen how other cultures remember their dead. Some with food, others with demure bunches of flowers or even just a single flower laid upon a headstone but with the greatest of affection.

Without having to resort to Googling it, I wonder where our enthusiasm for honoring our dead came from. The rest of the year, we don’t do anything for them. In public cemeteries, the grass will get overgrown, paint on the tombs and edifices will peel and crack, dead flowers will not even be cleared away. And the city of the dead once again regains its abandoned, eerily sad and derelict appearance until next November rolls around.

Having the big earthquakes happen just before this year’s long weekend for the dead, it occurred to me that all those pesos spent on the ephemeral floral tributes could have been better used to assist those living families struck badly by the natural calamity. People who lost homes and loved ones, others who were injured—all of them needing some kind of assistance. Water, food, shelter, transportation, medicines—needs of the living. While our decomposed dead revel in the colors and scents of exotic flowers engulfing their markers.

I often wonder if all these things matter to the dead. After all, when I’m gone, I won’t know anything. The only thing that I could hope now for is that people were able to make use of my life while I was here on earth. That I was able to share love, compassion, some knowledge. That I was able to make a small difference in this patch of dirt I call home. That’s how I want people to remember me. Or not. Once a year, to be offered flowers seems incongruous. So it’s okay to forget about me for the rest of the next twelve months? Oops, I forgot. People do remember when it’s a birthday. At least, some do.

All the thousands of pesos spent for those two days, flowers which (by the way) mostly got washed away by the torrential rains which came on the evening of Nov. 2 this year. But then we were no longer there to see the damage. Meanwhile, communities still cry for help. And since we already spent so much on the dead, the most we can offer for the living victims are prayers for their safety and well-being. It seems like there should be some rearranging of priorities. Come to think of it, I do have this weird friend who worried so much about the flowers she was going to bring to Greenhills. Worried because of what the other people with dead near her dead were going to say because her bouquets were meager.

Perhaps we celebrate this yearly event more for ourselves than for the dead. And don’t hate me for asking this question—just how many flowers did you give these dead when they were still alive, to show your affection? It’s kind of sad that dead people get more flowers than they ever got while they were alive enough to enjoy them. It also says what kind of assholes we are that we wait until they’re gone to honor them in this way. Or is it guilt that drives us to do this? Perhaps because we never treated them as well while they were here? I don’t know.

Allow me these morbid thoughts—for the living as well as for the dead. Because I wonder how those poor people in Cotabato and other disaster-struck areas are doing. On top of our starving rice farmers who don’t earn enough because of rice imports. There was a news photo showing that cemeteries in the damaged areas were left undecorated as a result. How crazy is that? Don’t these living have more important things to address than bringing flowers for their dead?

Maybe this one time, my dead lolos and lolas, titos and titas would have understood that they only got one rose each because I would use their flower money to buy rice and other things to donate to those hapless people driven to dire circumstances because the earth moved. And maybe let’s not go around saying that the tragedy was well-deserved and that it was caused by a higher power handing out retribution. Or that it was stopped by the insanity of one man.

Sometimes I wonder just how unwilling we are to buck tradition for more urgent and more important things. And sometimes I wonder how much nicer it would be if living people got flowers more frequently.