SAMAL, Bataan, (PNA) — An old woman came alone to the cemetery in this town at past 2 p.m. of All Saints’ Day on Friday.
Almost stooping, she lighted two small white candles at an unmarked tomb.
While other tombs were teeming with people, big candles, flowers and markers (lapida), the tomb made of simple concrete the old woman visited had no flowers, no big and expensive candles and no lapida.
The old woman seemed to be unmindful of the noise around her from many people looking after other graves. Her mind was focused on the lonely tomb. It was a lonely sight.
Bising Flores, a 90-year-old widow and whose three daughters died many years ago, said she could afford only the small candles so she came to the cemetery in the afternoon and would go home after the candles already expired.
Of the three children, only the grave of the eldest daughter she could remember and care for every “Undas” for the past many years.
She has another daughter, the youngest, but she left her for a man.
“I could not remember when was my eldest daughter died. All I could recall was there were only few who were laid to rest here,” she said.
The woman lives alone in a small house in Barangay Santa Lucia in this town with a P5,000 monthly pension, left by her late husband, a World War II veteran.