SOMETIMES WE HEAR IT SAID, THAT WE ARE prone to forget the dead, or that we take them for granted. This observation applies to the way we relate to both the nation’s illustrious dead and our own personal heroes. Sometimes, the elaborate official rites mask public indifference to yet another commemoration of yet another founding father’s death anniversary; sometimes the card games and the obsessive snacking at the cemetery on All Souls’ weekend obscure the fact that the younger generations know so little about those members of the family who have gone ahead.

And yet, the remarkable thing is: There is that undying attempt to remember, there is that continuing effort to honor the dead, even if only on official holidays or religious feasts. Would that we could all say the same thing about our own relationship to the living.

The joke that asserts that women receive flowers only twice in their life—when they are being courted and when they are dead—has the bite of social satire; the teeth marks of exaggeration trace the outline of truth.

Or, at least, of a certain truth. We can take the living for granted too. We can grow indifferent to the sacrifices of the living too. In the deadly language of the young: “Ma at Pa,” short for “Malay ko at pakialam ko”—the English idiomatic equivalent, which unfortunately loses much of the insouciance in the translation, is “I don’t know and I don’t care.”

If we could only treat the living the way we officially treat the dead: with a sense of appreciation, of empathy, for a life seen in full.

The deaths of famous people can be instructive. The national outpouring of sympathy at the death of former President Corazon Aquino, or the worldwide spasm of grief at the death of Michael Jackson, shows us how a person, any person, ought to be remembered: in light. That principle comes from a famous musical play, but “Remember me in light” also comes straight out of, or reflects, the perspective of the great traditional religions. Without glossing over shortcomings, charity encourages us to remember the dead for the good they have done.

Would that we could all say the same thing about the living. A thought, then, for All Saints’ Day: We should treat the living the way, on feasts like today’s, we treat the dead.

Masks for the dead

IF ONE WERE TO JUDGE FROM TELEVISION COVerage alone, the American tradition of “trick or treat” on Halloween, complete with masks and costumes, has become something of a tradition in urban areas in the Philippines as well, at least in the last 10 or 15 years.

We can decry the galloping Westernization that this new rite of passage represents, or we can denounce the creeping commercialization that makes the yearly event possible, or we can condemn the seeming subversion of the Christian faith that devil costumes and depictions of the Grim Reaper signify.

In fact, many have already done so. There is no shortage of critics of Westernization, or opponents of our increasingly commercial culture, or outraged defenders of the Catholic Church.

There is much to be said for the opposition, especially when it comes to the issue of the unthinking acceptance of cultural fads.

But there is in fact a deeper religious meaning to the ghoulish practice we have come to associate with Halloween: the tradition of dressing up as the devil or as death itself (plus those of currently trendy figures from popular culture like zombies and vampires) teaches us to reckon with the mystery of dying. It helps us prepare for the inevitable.

If the younger generations grow up less afraid of the fact of death, less spooked by the ghostly or the seemingly unnatural, perhaps we should count that, not as trick, but as treat.