For typhoon yolanda survivors: Mass graves’ visit stirs haunting recollections

TACLOBAN CITY, Philippines – Millions of people in the Philippines made their annual pilgrimages to family gravesites on All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day, in a tradition that combines fervent Catholic faith with candle lighting and prayers for the souls of their departed loved ones.

In this capital city of Leyte Province, which is still suffering from the devastation of super typhoon Yolanda, the mood of the residents was mournful and somber.

Many of the mourners had to visit a mass grave at Barangay Basper, where more than 2,400 bodies were interred after Yolanda, the strongest typhoon ever recorded to hit land, ravaged the city on November 8, 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 the 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 said.

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 added.

Ricka Joy Quisay, 17, lit candles in front of the Tacloban cemetery because she was not 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 Yolanda 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. - InterAksyon.com