In memoriam

On 1 November of every year, most Filipinos hurdle traffic to visit memorial parks, mausoleums and cemeteries that bear the remains of cherished relatives and friends.

Most offer prayers, while others gather to reminisce and recollect snippets of the lives of those whom the heavens have chosen for their own. Our mourning is not time-bound. We feel keenly the chasm wrought by the loss of a beloved from our midst.

We are still bereft at our father’s passing, even though it was a decade ago. Still fresh is the shared grief of UP Law Class ’87 over the unexpected demise of former UP student leader and cherished classmate Jessie John Gimenez, or the sadness of the Senate staff over their colleague, Triskelion Ipe Dahino, who fatally succumbed to an illness.

Surely, all of us have borne the pain of the loss of a parent, a spouse, a child, a lover, a friend. We mark the years they were lost to us, our grief and sorrow slowly easing with the passage of time. Yet when we refresh our memories of their words, their touches, their smiles, the pain of loss still remain — maybe not as agonizing, but more like a dull ache that twinges with each recollection.

We remember because we cherish their lives. We remember because each life is and will always be precious. We honor them not by continuing to grieve, but by leading purposeful lives they will be proud of.

Carpe diem! Seize the day! This should be our new year’s resolution — committing to take all that life could offer to form paths of our own making.

For when we depart this temporal existence and shed the mortal coils that bind us, hopefully we leave with no regrets hounding us. Those we leave behind can be comforted knowing that each of us can echo these words of Amelia Josephine Burr:

“Because I have loved life, I shall have no sorrow to die.

I have sent up my gladness on wings, to be lost in the blue of the sky.

I have run and leaped with the rain, I have taken the wind to my breast.

My cheeks like a drowsy child to the face of the earth I have pressed.

Because I have loved life, I shall have no sorrow to die.

“I have known the peace of heaven, the comfort of work done well.

I have longed for death in the darkness and risen alive out of hell.

Because I have loved life, I shall have no sorrow to die.

“I gave a share of my soul to the world, when and where my course is run.

I know that another shall finish the task I surely must leave undone.

I know that no flower, nor flint was in vain on the path I trod.

As one looks on a face through a window, through life I have looked on God,

Because I have loved life, I shall have no sorrow to die.”

Salma Pir T. Rasul is a lawyer by profession, admitted to the practice of law in the Philippines, as well as in the states of New York and Maryland. She is currently the programs director of the Philippine Center for Islam and Democracy. She is also the director for Islamic Law Studies of the University of the Philippines Law Center and likewise serves as programs development consultant of the Institute for the Administration of Justice of the same center.