Our dear departed can't smell those flowers anymore

There was a somewhat low-key Cebuano writer (but who, to my mind, really did an excellent piece )  who wrote his autobiography entitled quite appropriately  "SEND ME THE FLOWERS NOW." He was really saying that all those flowers that we buy now and every All Souls Day are nothing but plain ''pakitang tao." We spend a lot of money buying those beautiful flowers from all over. But the object of our affections cannot smell those blossoms any more. These expensive floral arrangements we send to the dead are useless and without authentic meaning anymore.

My dear mother left us last March, in a Seattle, Washington Hospital. In all her very auspicious eighty-eight years in this world, I don't think I ever did send her a bouquet of roses. What a real regret. Although she always told me and she always spread the word to all our relatives and close friends that I have been a very good eldest son. For more than twenty-five years that my parents lived in the US, my late mom always made it a point to call me every Monday. She always required me to make a detailed oral report on how the rest of my siblings were doing.

And so, in a few days, when I go to the memorial parks and visit the resting places of all my dearly beloved departed relatives, I would not make too much ado about flowers anymore. Of course, a bunch of some white blooms may be enough but I shall do so with a heavy feeling that when those aunts and uncles, grandpas and grandmas were still around, we just took them for granted. There were no sweet moments when we might have held their calloused hands and kissed them with genuine love, affections, and much gratitude.

Yes, we seem to get sentimental only now,  and feel some bonds of close affinity only rather too lately, that they are no longer around to really see the red roses and sweet-smelling petals that we so thoughtfully buy from classy flower shops in five-star hotel lobbies. But when they were still around, we even did not have enough time to visit them and spend some quality moments with those really nice and loving folks. Those folks who have made a lot of sacrifices for us just to make sure we reach this kind of life we have today.

We can never thank enough our mothers and fathers, our grandparents and uncles and aunts. Somehow, in their own respective unique ways of expressing their loves, they have really touched our lives and make them more enriched and meaningful. Now that it is the season of candles and flowers, and of masses and prayers for the dead, we try to make up for our thoughtlessness by splurging on flowers that those departed ones can not appreciate anymore.

But we still have many living close family members and friends today, who have never received a single petal from us. Why don't we send them the flowers now, instead of squandering them to the cold tombs and lonely sepulchers? Of course, our affections are never measured in terms of floral bouquets and dozens of expensive candles. What really matters most are the feelings we convey when we hold the hands of our living loved ones, and hug them real tightly, while in the backdrop,  the sunset kisses the shores in a horizon that is about to bid the twilight goodbye.