ALL Souls’ Day used to be regarded as the one day in the year when distant cousins meet. Now there's just the family and All Souls’ Day no longer brings the excitement of a fair that cemeteries really are on that day.

For every dead parent is a reminder that those who have come before us are now leaving, one by one. The death of a parent is no longer the great tragedy it was when we were kids and those left behind were called orphans. For the adults of today, losing a parent or two no longer brings the loss of an orphan, just an occasional emptiness whenever memories skim by; their loss now just a matter of fact and time. It's scary.

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No one ever warned us about this, no one even gave a hint about it. Were they just as afraid when they were our age? Not one of them ever said anything.

We used to be children, meeting up at memorial parks to visit somebody's lolo or lola. "Nakikipatay," we laughingly referred to such because there wasn't a direct relative who has to be visited then and so we "shared" someone else's departed. But now, just about every friend has lost a parent or both. And it gets scarier still. The ones who have held the doors open for us are already leaving, leaving us with the door to hold open for the generation that is already climbing up the flight of stairs you have chosen.

Along with the fear of letting go of yet another member of the generation ahead is the vexation at receiving news that someone just a half-generation forward had likewise crossed the great beyond.

Vexation, it is, for they shouldn't be going ahead as well. Slow down, we're not quite ready yet, you wanted to shout. But the decision isn't really in our hands. They'll leave whether this generation is ready or not; their mission in this world already over. Tough.

"Here is a test whether your mission on earth is finished," Richard Back wrote in his now classic, 'Illusions, The Adventure of a Reluctant Messiah', "If you're alive, it isn't."

I'm alive, it isn't.

Like the feeling of trepidation left by the death of friends' parents so is the feeling when one finds Richard Bach's books in the "classics" section of a bookstore. When the book was bought, it was under the "bestsellers". In the background, the radio plays familiar tunes which DJs refer to as oldies. It's funny, it's scary, it's life as it should be as each generation every year moves forward, closer to realization, closer to death, and yet another door is handed over for someone else to hold. At the moment, I'm holding on tight to the door left for me to hold, making sure it remains open for everyone who wants to enter because when I leave, I want that door held open by more than one so that a never-ending stream will be coming up and in. It's going to be a party.

*****

"How are you now?" a friend asked from out of the blue.

"I'm okay."

"That's it?" he persisted.

"Yes." End of story.

Choices are made, mine made a long time ago. And in making that choice, certain privileges are given up, including the right to get my pound of flesh at my own instigation. Choices, choices, the choices we make; that doesn't mean we no longer know how to hate. Under my breath I simply hum what was my dad's contemporary music but which was being played as a very old classic during my childhood years: "Our day will come, and we'll have everything..."

And then I smile, there's someone there a generation ahead whom I will never miss, I can't wait. Haha. saestremera@yahoo.com