DRIVING down Torres Street in the evening, I was expecting an eerie silence, to see empty tables and gloomy dimness along the usually exciting area. Instead, the many resto-bars of Torres were actually hopping with activity. Customers crowd around tables teeming with alcoholic drinks as colored lights and pulsating music fill the air. It was like any ordinary gimmick night.

After spending hours watching Chinese paper money burn into ashes, candles flickering in the steaming mid-morning heat, and ice cream melting stickily onto the grass during the day, it was a bit unnerving to see that there were people chilling out and partying the night away.

Sun.Star accepts donations for victims of Typhoon Ondoy

Not that the cemetery I visited in the daytime was not throbbing with life and activity as well. Davao Memorial Park resembled an outdoor mall. There were booths for cell phone load, every food imaginable, and even ukay-ukay clothing. Mobile hawkers with their fans, cartoon balloons, ice cubes, and water bottles visited tent after tent, mausoleum after mausoleum.

Commerce visits the dead as well. As people happily crowd around the man selling sliced green mangoes and vinegar dip, I realized that at the time of remembrance for those who have passed away, life is ever present, and very conspicuously so.

This year's All Saints' and All Souls' days came a few weeks after typhoons took the life of countless Filipinos. And for my colleague, death became more personal for her and her family when a few days before November 1, her father passed away. Through tears, she shared that she is just grateful that before he took his last breath, they were able to talk heart to heart, pray and reconnect.

But just as life asserts itself clearly in the cemeteries, life also asserted itself amidst stories of loss and grief. Six minutes into November 2, just a bit after midnight, I became an aunt to a baby girl. My sister-in-law welcomes her third child and first daughter, a delightful reminder again that life is ever present, that no matter how many typhoons come our way and how many losses hit us, there are always gains. The miracle of life will still be present.

That November 2 night, driving down Torres Street, my husband and I were on our way to meet my cousins. They were in town to visit their father's grave. Since they live in Cebu, the only times I really get to see them is on November and December, when they fly to Davao to go to the cemetery. As another cousin once joked, often its death that brings us together.

As we sat inside the coffee shop, joking around, swapping stories, laughing and sipping drinks, it's just amazing how the existence of extreme contrasts make each other appear more powerful. Darkness seems darker in the presence of light. And light becomes brighter for us if we have seen darkness. Success is more significant if experienced after going through defeat. Food becomes more satisfying if we know the feeling of hunger. Death more powerful because there is so much life around, and likewise, life feels sweeter, more miraculous because we are constantly reminded that death is present.

Life is around us. Perhaps that is one reason why we Filipinos remember the dead every November; so, we can be reminded that we are alive and that while still so, we must make most of life.

(Jocy L. So-Yeung teaches at Davao Christian High School.)