“Kalag-kalag” is of course more about the living than it is about the dead. In more fortunate years between us, it is one other cause for reunion. On this particular day, what’s left of the family, whoever of them can still make it, troop to the cemetery to light candles and pray in some small way. The mood is almost always celebratory. We remember the dead without the requisite mourning that accompanies the regular funeral.
And, of course, in the natural course of it thoughts of death steal into our minds. It is the right time for it though we would rather not think about it ordinarily.
These thoughts start always with slight signals of dread as we enter the cemetery. We read the names and dates on the stones.
This one born this date and dying this year. Our minds inevitably do the mathematics. He or she lived this number of years.
How can we not wonder what dates will be etched on our own?
And especially if we have loved-ones growing old or surviving some sort of terminal illness or other we do have to contemplate issues of mortality. Does the soul really exist? What happens to us after we die?
There is no scientific proof, of course, that our souls live forever unless we include here our own peculiar religious faiths.
Scientists over time have researched this issue looking for proof where of course none can be found. But the ultimate conclusion from all this is not that the soul cannot exist. It is only that no incontrovertible proof of it has so far been found.
One might react to this several ways. One is to go by the idea that if no proof of something can be found then one must not believe. The other is to go by the inertia of believing following after the travel of one’s own culture, following after our own people’s beliefs, because that too is important.
Just because we cannot prove something does not mean it is not there, unless one is a scientist or materialist of the purist vein. Consider that most of the technological gizmos we now enjoy were figured out by fictionists and philosophers long before they ever came to be.
Theory always precedes proof.
And so it is not entirely bad to believe without proof. Indeed, it is absolutely human. And one does not have to believe purely within the confines of established religions. Beyond that, faith is also play. It is storytelling. It is personal philosophy.
And so, while at the beginning one might grow by the tenets of a particular persuasion, at a certain point in one’s life especially as one grows older, one must weight all these inside the bounds of one’s own experiences. If God and Heaven are out there then we might metaphysically feel their presence in a most personal way.
Why not? But if we don’t, then that too is alright.
The sight of candles on a stone cross does not obligate belief. It only obligates remembering. We remember not only those who passed away before us. We recall especially particular transactions of the emotion.
We remember the love between us. This comes first and foremost. And we are right to wonder if this love crosses over to what for us now seems an impregnable boundary.
In the new physics there has been much talk of the possibility of multiple universes existing alongside each other.
It might go by the name string-theory, which for us now seems just as obscure as the tenets of other religions not our own. And yet, even in its obscurity we are charmed by thoughts of the world not as simple as we might have figured it.
The possibilities are by their intrinsic nature infinite. Life is a mystery. The fact we know next to nothing about it is proof enough to celebrate it either for what it is or clothed inside the trappings of belief and religious faith.
Either way, we found good cause this week to remember all things existing without proof of their existence, the other side of what we do know.
Such things as God, soul and spirit. Such a thing as the love between us and those who preceded us. Something we cannot fully express other than by a longing silence, wherein we etch a small simple message to the other side