Kindred Spirits

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A/N: The topic here was All Souls' Day and All Saints' Day.

The year flashes in swift little days. A glorious cross towers over the cowering hearts below--- fretting over the upcoming ritual that has recycled in our culture since the birth of man.

From the Java men who knelt on cave sepulchers to embed antlers and flowers on rock--- to modern Mexicans placing cakes and photographs of lost loved ones on ofrendas ('offering tables'). From the antecedent of the Catholic lithurgy, the Ancient Roman Feast of Lamures, where mass gaiety mollified the dead---to the Filipinos today who paint and refurbish their lost ones' graves to assure them of living devotion.

Lost loves, ever-mingled souls, immortal flesh and blood and their ephemeral company: we all remember.

I first attended All Soul's Day on a moist November the first. My thighs wallowed in the soupy earth to reach the jungle cemetery where my nonagenarian great-grandmother lay.

Next to her was her brother, a notorious cockpit gambler and alcoholophile, where clusters of his descendants drank cases of beer and battled chickens away.

Years afterwards, the count of people I lost on Earth plodded in increase. Women replaced or fixed old pancions, cleaned the moss and weeds tangling the pathways, and fingered tokens of flowers and candles in memory. Stories echoed in the somber forest and my mind would gurgle at the burling intensity.

There were those who would enter this realm of nostalgia as mere shades of people and return in animato.
For millenia, we humans have found ways to hallow the passing of our kin. Because, we find it hard to process how relatives, friends, saints, and other people who so vivified our lives
could just wither away in a jiffy.

In our communal rituals, we feel the surge of empathy, of human compassion. Here, we can find acceptance despite the shocking bereavement. These rituals we made to empower ourselves heal and refurbish as we do the final resting places of the ones who have left us.

Finally, we can find hope---when we medicate our pallid hearts with this extreme catharsis. When we aquiver with the flesh and blood that ensures us life.

A/N: Read alot! If you find fiction more compelling for you, remember that you can use what you read for style, grammar and vocab.

          But read nonfiction as well! Especially in the month nearing your contest. Historical anecdotes and facts are as succulent as fiction---plus they are true stories!

Thus, inject what you read in nonfiction in your article to give it a concrete, cemented feeling. 🏢Most writers are amorphous and ramble on with opinions and reflections.🤔💭 But writing with facts is what makes you STAND OUT. 🗞📌

Don't forget to COMMENT (and vote if you really love me ❤️) to motivate this jaded campus journalist. Sigue na you, comment na!!!

In this lethargic, monotonous world, only other people have the ability to kindle the last ember from a pallid heart. Charrot 🥕🐰

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