Remembering Our Loved Ones
All Saints Day seems more like a school fair to me except there are gravestones, tents, picnic tables all over the cemetery. The mood at the cemetery is festive with children running around, the ice cream man ringing his bell, the taho vendor yelling taho, kids playing with melting candle, teens surfing at the SMART BRO internet booth, food vendors raking in some sales from the crowd. It’s a yearly ritual for our loved one whom we love, miss and remember always. Once a year, we share that common bond with families with a similar loss.
The first All Saints Day for Luijoe in 2000 felt surreal. The marble tombstone felt cold to the touch but the laughter and the crowd reminded me that Luijoe is never far from me. To my dear son, my dad, my mom, brothers Oscar and Ruben, they have not really left us but just gotten ahead of us to their real home. The memory of my loved one is a part of my life forever. Today is a celebration that love never dies.
View Photos at the Cemetery during All Saints Day
Filipina mom) and my journey to a "new normal" after the death of 
Thanks for sharing your experience through this site. I lost my infant son in January. Having grown up on the border of Mexico, the Dia De Los Muertos was part of my own childhood. This year it came and went without me paying any attention. Every day is a day of remembering right now. Perhaps in time it will become something marked my special occasions. Thank you for the reminder that love never dies.
@Robert- Truly, our loved may have died but love is forever. It lives in our hearts forever.
I took a lot of pictures of my relatives’ gravestones last All Saints’ Day as well. My brother would’ve been 15 this year and it would’ve been really great to have a much younger brother that ‘Benjamin Michael’ would’ve been.
My mom survived her terrible ordeal back in 1992, but she suffered complications that was no longer conducive for her to have another child.
@benj- so you lost a sibling too? My son would have been 14 years old this year. haay.
Yup. My mom delivered him, but due to uterine atony and profuse bleeding, the baby became hypoxic and died a few minutes after delivery.
They had to do emergency hysterectomy to stop the hemorrhage.
My brother was sick with Dengue when my brother died. He was young then so we kept the bad news from him. My mom was in a coma. We buried my brother the following day. Only myself and my dad saw Benjamin Michael.