LAST Sunday was All Saints’ Day. Everyone trooped to the cemeteries including myself.

We visited Cempark and Queen City Memorial Park. I looked at the lawn surrounding the graves, the mausoleums and the tremendous amount of flowers. I asked myself these questions: What more proof do we need of man’s mortality? Why do we live as if there were no end to our lives? Why do we still go our wanton ways believing that we will live forever? Why don’t we speak our love now to those who are still living?

I remembered Gretchen Barreto when she spoke after the typhoons Ondoy and Pepeng on television. She said, “My husband and I pray together daily now, because we know that at anytime we can go and we can lose everything.”

Sun.Star accepts donations for victims of Typhoon Ondoy

My heart was so touched this Nov.1 when I passed the grave of a one-year-old child. His tombstone read “from 1977-1978.”

Thirty-one years, as of this year, the entire grave was filled with such a wealth of flowers so tastefully arranged that I could feel the love showered on the child. Not a single space was left empty. Multi-colored flowers dotted the Bermuda grass while a center basket of flowers dominated the floral effect.

We all know that bringing flowers and lighting candles are more for the hearts of the living than for the dead. Somehow our guilt feelings are assuaged, or our love is repeatedly reinforced as we visit our beloved immediate family members, our relatives or friends on All Saints’ Day.

As the years increase, our list of the departed souls also grow longer and while we may not remember some of them on a day to day basis, generally, we remember them on Nov.1.

Sitting in front of my Mom and Dad’s grave at Cempark, I could not help but remember Mom’s innate love for life, how quick she would burst into giggles or chuckles and how quick she was to hug me. Yet as I talked to her, I asked forgiveness for the times I must have turned away from her love. Children often take their parent’s love for granted.

Even today, we are accused of not loving them when they do not get their way. How often has a son stomped his way out of the room because he was not allowed to use the family car. How many times have we been shouted at in anger with these words, “You do not love me because you do not trust me!” And yet I’m sure we parents now have also done our share of hurting our Mom and Dad, too. That is reality!

Last Oct.30, after our meditation, Fr. Noel Gartlan read to us the beatitudes. During our sharing, I commented, “After listening to the beatitudes, if one is bone weary, one would like to cross over to the other side. Everything seems wonderful there.”

Fr. Noel in his usual way of making us reflect asked, “What is the other side?”

I answered, “Heaven, where God is.”

In jest, he said, “Don’t go yet!”

But before he could continue, my friend Sony Velez commented, “I was going to say exactly that!” and she continued. “Actually the beatitudes are for us now as we live life!”

Upon reflection that night, I realized that the beatitudes reflect a particular application of God’s love to the various situations we encounter now in our lives. How apt that the Gospel of Mathew fell on Nov.1, All Saints’ Day.

All of us, especially the not so young, have experienced at one time or the other “being poor in spirit, being meek, being merciful, being peacemakers, etc. If we look back and reflect, the rewards were already there for us.

I guess the beatitudes are what we have in common with the saints we visited last Nov.1. If we live the beatitudes, we live love and love is Christ. We really can be generous with that love even on ordinary days and be in “communion with the saints!” and not wait for Nov.1 to express that love.