IT HAS been a year since most of us have not visited the graves of our beloved dead. For many, this has been a form of deprivation that creates a vacuum not only in tradition but also in the hearts of the living. But what is there for the dead to lose? Are we here talking of a loss on the part of the dead or the living?
Reflecting much deeper on our practices and traditions would lead us to ask why the need to visit the dead? Our Christian faith, of course, teaches us that hope continues even beyond the grave. However, peoples of secular persuasions would see the matter quite differently. It is said that "death is only a horizon, and a horizon is nothing but a limit to our sight."
Putting in brackets our religious convictions, death is the most universal of all human phenomena, and death itself is as certain as (if not more certain than) eternal life.
Apparently, it is the living who are more in need of the dead and not the other way around.
Despite the faith we profess, particularly our belief in the communion of saints, still we wake up every day to the bare truth that it is those who survive that continue to feel the grief and suffer the loss.
As for the dead? We really do not know, all we have is a hope that they must be in a place better than where we are. And for this reason, we hold on to our convictions that there must be something else somewhere beyond us.
Between the living and the dead, it is the living who is left with the task to make life meaningful. Death puts the final punctuation on the existence of a person. In death, the life of the departed is concluded. The one left behind is he who shall continue to carry the remaining burdens. He shall have to fight as many battles as possible until the day would come for him to also leave a mark.
Since the enlightenment, the so-called "last things" of man have been subjected to suspicion. Eschatology is the theological jargon for these things that pertain to the "final end" of humanity: death, judgment, heaven, and hell.
Except for death which remains an indispensable philosophical theme up to now, the three others have been subject to criticism and even disbelief. Especially with the German philosopher Immanuel Kant's critique of pure reason, no proof for anything eschatological can be considered robust enough to withstand philosophical doubt or suspicion.
Are we saying then that there is no point talking about the dead? If heaven and hell are not indubitable, should we pass on to silence our hopes and longings for the dead?
Are we to remain silent about the dead, and should we just leave their remains in their graves, and move on with our lives until it shall be our turn to also go? Not necessarily.
While we may not be absolutely certain about where all the dead have gone, they can be in heaven, or they may be trapped in samsara or the cyclicality of life, but certainly, something in them has "survived in us."
Thornton Wilder says it more profoundly: "there is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning."