THE wife and I dub it: “No Erasures List”--names of departed kith and kin jotted down for inclusion in the traditional All Souls’ Day Mass.

“No traveler returns…from this undiscovered country,” Hamlet muttered. That includes presidents, like Ferdinand Marcos, or Loloy, my barber.

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Name recall, however, can be elusive, specially for those Associated Press joshed as “near-elderly.’ Some names one encountered, in half a century of journalism, are now street signs: Jose del Mar; Pedro Calomarde; Jose Logarta, etc. All reporters, who covered Gov. Sergio Osmeña Jr. at the Capitol with me, in the ‘50s, are gone.

“We’re in the twilight of life,” I murmured at a Press Foundation of Asia meeting. “Don’t say that,” publisher Eugenio “Geny” Lopez Jr. remonstrated. “We’ve plenty of time.” Before the year ended, Geny was gone.

“Death is not the extinguishing of life,” Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore wrote. “It is putting out the lamp because dawn has come.”

The ancient Book of Macabees teaches: “It is a good and wholesome thought to pray for the dead.” And in 1848, ”Irish immigrants brought “All Hallow’s Eve” spooky costumes to the US. That became “Halloween.”

”In California, our grand-daughters join trick-or-treat parties,” the wife mused. “Here, grandchildren light candles at graves. And those will include ours, sooner rather than later.”

Celebrations differ but the essentials remain. “We give them back to you O Lord, who first gave them to us,” an ancient prayer says. “Yet, as you do not lose in giving, so we have not lost them by their return…Death is only a horizon. And a horizon is the limit of our sight.

We thank you for the deep sense of mystery that lies beyond our mortal dust…Lift us up, that we may see further, as one by one, you gather scattered families, from the strife and weariness of time, to the peace of eternity.”

“The communion of saints is enshrined in the Creed,” Oblate professor Ron Rolheiser explains. It asserts we’re still in a real community of life and in communication with those who have died.

Often in a family, a friendship or community, we experience tension and hurts that (aren’t) undone. And then death brings a peace, a charity, not possible before. Why?

Because death washes things clean. Luke wrote that Jesus told the good thief on the cross: “Today you will be with me in paradise!” Those words are meant for all who die without having had time and chance to make all amends, and speak all apologies owed.

“There is still time after death, on both sides, for reconciliation and healing to happen. Because inside the communion of saints, we have privileged access to each other.

And we can speak all those words that we couldn’t speak before.

We can reach across death’s divide.

“It is a gift to die a happy death, reconciled in love, with no unfinished business. But, happily, there’s time still after death for those who end up dying with some bitterness, anger and wound still gnawing away.”

”We Filipinos use the idiom ‘itaga mo sa bato’ to assert our utmost confidence,” Pastor Lino Pantoja notes. “Oh, that my words were engraved in rock forever” were Job’s exact words.

Uttered 2,500 years before Easter morning, they’re called Job’s “primitive theology of the Resurrection.”

But on All Souls’ Day 2009, they sound breathtakingly current: “I know that my Redeemer lives. And in the end, He will stand forth upon the earth. And after my skin shall have been destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God.”

(juanlmercado@gmail.com)