Millions of people in the Philippines made their annual pilgrimages to family gravesites on Sunday in a tradition that combines fervent Catholic faith with the country’s penchant for festivity.
But while many people in Manila’s sprawling cemeteries treated the event like a giant picnic, in the central city of Tacloban, which is still suffering the devastation of Super Typhoon Haiyan, the mood was mournful and somber.
Many of the mourners had to visit a mass grave where more than 2,400 bodies were interred after Haiyan, the strongest typhoon ever recorded to hit land, ravaged the city in November 2013.
The city government has covered the mass grave with scores of small white crosses and families have taken to labeling the crosses with the names of their deceased loved ones.
Rebecca Gonzales Daa, 56, was one of the many who brought flowers and candles to the mass gravesite for her late husband, Raul, one of more than 7,350 people left dead or missing by the storm’s tsunami-like waves.
“We had evacuated, my mother and other siblings fled to my uncle’s apartment but my husband went home. He was worried about our pigs and our belongings,” she recalled tearfully.
“We found his body with a large wound on his head later. He must have been hit by a piece of floating debris,” she told AFP.
In the aftermath of the disaster, with piles of bodies lining the streets and funeral parlors destroyed, Tacloban authorities resorted to burying the dead together.
“We used to visit the graves of my father, my brother on All Saints’ Day. I would bring snacks. It wasn’t so sad because I would see my family. It was like a reunion,” Daa recalled.
“Now, it is a sad occasion. I tell [my husband], we are left alone with no one to watch over us,” she said.
Ricka Joy Quisay, 17, lit candles in front of the Tacloban cemetery because she isn’t even sure her mother is in the mass grave.
Quisay fled to an evacuation center before the storm struck but her mother, Rebecca, 59, did not believe Haiyan would be that strong.
“The next day, we saw her body just placed alongside the road. It lay there for two weeks till it got bloated and was finally carried away by a truck,” she said.
“Before, All Saints’ Day wasn’t sad. My mother would light candles in front of our house. But now, my mother is the one we are lighting candles for,” she said.
But while most came to honor their dead, enterprising individuals like pedicab driver Jomar Aure, 26, took the opportunity to earn. Aure and two of his friends offered labeling services using black paint.
“This is an easier way to earn money. At an average, I earn P250 daily from driving pedicab, but today, we got P1,000 from labeling,” Aure said.
Meanwhile, a high-ranking Cardinal called on Catholics that the appropriate day to remember the dead is on Nov. 2, or All Souls Day.
“What is happening is that, we many Filipinos and dioceses have emphasized All Saints’ Day as the time of blessing the dead and blessing the grave. I think that’s a wrong one,” Cotabato Archbishop Orlando Cardinal Quevedo said in an interview over Radio Veritas.
Quevedo added that Catholics should not use the opportune time as “picnics” or “family gatherings.”
“We go to cemeteries to remember them and their good deeds, not for picnics and not for reunions,” Quevedo said.
