The greenery had begun changing color when he arrived in the port city of Hamburg, Germany. Some, like the weeping willows by the rivers and ponds, retained their verdure long into the autumn. But the rest, like the maples assumed new hues, from shades of yellow to brown to red. The leaves changed hues, darkened, wilted and clung to boughs and branches till cold winds snatched them and they fell like a slow-motion rain of pixies, twirling in the air and turning the pavements into a carpet assemblage that crackled beneath the weight of bikers and pedestrians.
On a bright October morning, he read that an uncle of his had died on his home island half a world away. He had seen uncle one last time during a visit in August, the day after the village fiesta in honor of Saint Rose of Lima. When they arrived, a minister had been standing in the yard, amid dogs and a goat, bearing a phial, waiting to be let in. Now it all made sense. His relatives did not want to wait for uncle to be on the verge of the afterlife before requesting for a churchman to anoint him with the holy oil of the sick or terminal.
Since uncle lived outside the city, he rarely saw him save on occasions like Christmas and weddings. Uncle put life into the parties, dancing, in the eyes of his children and nephews, with the skipping and stabbing choreography that seemed out of step with the beats of millennial yet gave delight precisely because it was evergreen.
Outside the usual gatherings, he saw uncle whenever he went to the village far from the city with his friends. They stayed at the clan-owned hut by a strait, to which uncle lent him the key. The bamboo and thatched-roof dwelling was their base camp on expeditions up and down the coast, up the forested mountain that was a dormant volcano and to the town’s many gorgeous waterfalls.
His friends have not met his uncle. He usually stood behind the scenes when he came with them. But the warm reception from his auntie and cousins, with the best dishes from sweetened pork to fish cooked in vinegar along with homegrown fruits like papayas and bananas signified that uncle made hospitality a family hallmark. Uncle remained other-centered during their last conversation that happened at noon. Unable to move around unless on a wheelchair and slow in speech, he posed the preprandial greeting: Have you taken your meal?
He remembered his uncle at Mass in the Cathedral of Saint Mary in Hamburg on the night of his death, the feast of the apostles, Saints Simon and Jude. On one face of a column inside the neo-Romanesque temple, he saw a painting of Saint Jude, in typical iconography, displaying near his chest an image of Jesus Christ known throughout Eastern Christianity as an icon not made by human hands.
He agrees with the theologians who say that eulogies must not canonize. Yet love, though poor, looks into the depths of goodness and finds the Morning Star that shimmers there. He sees in faith this convergence between silent Saint Jude and his generous uncle: the image of the Father reigning in their hearts.
There were pumpkins at the grocery. He bought one for the weekend celebrations of All Hallows. He did not carve it into a jack-o’-lantern. He would have, if he could, carved Christian symbols into the pumpkin, as in the pictures of Halloween lanterns branded with the faces of the Lord and his Mother that he saw in a website. But he cooked pumpkin porridge for All Hallows’ Eve—that autumn when our prayers rise like leaves blown upwards from the winter of this world into unceasing summer—the garden where we hope all our dear departed bask in the light of the tree of life.