By Telly G. Ocampo
My Wish Upon A Star!
There used to be a tv program and concert in the park. The back drop of this concert was actually the Paco cemetery. Events and scenes like this concert bring me back to our English Literature class under Ms. Candida Vale and Ms. Luz Ibaya at the old St. Joseph College campus with the German sisters in its helm. Then the poem Elegy Written in the Country Churchyard comes to mind.
I’ve also been to Ayala Alabang. When you get out of the church at Sta. Susanna, you are actually in the churchyard facing the Campo Santo. The scene brings us back to the time when we had the Campo Santo in our very own churchyard in Baclayon, outside the Patio. It’s actually that space between the Patio and the Central school.
That space used to be a cemetery until we had a new cemetery up there at the “Kota”. The Campo Santo in the “Kota” of old amazed my young mind then. We used to enter the chapel in the “kota” and noticed the edifice in the middle of the chapel. Once upon a time, masses were held there especially during the observance of All Saints Day and All Souls Day.
In that chapel, there was a large painting. I don’t know if it’s still there until today. I would not dare go inside the chapel now for it has become a tambakan of unnamed bones. It seems there is no longer appreciation of things in the past and no appreciation of the treasures in our midst – our legacy from Spain.
This is just the narrative of my grandmother. The bones of her father and sister are inside the Baclayon church beneath the choir loft. Accordingly, that was at the time of Padre Juan Talaid Villamor, the first Filipino parish priest of our town. There are other bones inside the big columns supporting the choir loft: those of the Cañetes, Josols, Oppus-Real families and Talaid-Villamor families. They were the forbears of Padre Juan.
The good cemetery came in later. And that’s where the remains of Padre Juan are entombed. Notice that structure in the middle of the go-od, blackened by the embers of candles lighted as offerings for the dead. It’s where people light candles for the unnamed souls of their ancestors.
We have a municipal cemetery just next to the go-od across the street. And a private classy one just above the municipal cemetery facing the Baclayon-Corella road.
I wish cemeteries will have the feel of a park where trees of greens red roses grow, too. But it’s so sad that our cemeteries have become a concrete jungle.
Garbage here and there with animal waste scattered in between and where empty plastic sachets are just left scattered after attendees of a burial ceremony feast over their snacks.
Catholics and Christians as we are, the saying “Cleanliness is next to Godliness” should have always been carved in our hearts as we go to honor the dead in our cemeteries.