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| Glass painting on a wall at the Church inside the campus of La Salette University in Santiago City, Philippines |
On All Souls' Day, the blogger sees in his mind her sister Inocencia preparing rice cakes and putting them on a low table in the sala of the ancestral home, now a 3-storey structure along what used to be Jose Palma Street in Laoag City.
The cakes like linapet and patupat and niniogan made of diket or glutinous rice, are atang or offering for the souls of our departed: our parents, Dionisio and Rafaela, my brother Ciriaco, Manang Immang, sister Helen, a teacher, who died and was buried in Padada, Davao del Sur; and five other siblings who either died when they were still kids or in their infancy, and whose names escape me now.
Neighbors will come for the long prayer imploring the Almighty God to keep their souls (our departed) forever resting in His bosom. After the prayer, the guests will eat maybe pancit with cola and other soft drinks. The prayer group may take some of the rice cakes and bring them to their respective homes.
It's Fiesta dagiti Natay or undas, when the souls of the dead pay a visit to their ancestral home, linger for a while, then leave the house to go back to their kind of Lethe.
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