November marks the month of honoring our dear departed.  We remember our parents, relatives, friends and ancestors who have gone ahead of us through our masses and prayers.  We pray for souls that they may be cleansed and purified of their earthly sinfulness and thus be welcomed into Our Father's kingdom.

Remembering our dead gives us time to reflect on our mortality too.  In essense, we pray that our lives on earth be as God has planned it for us. We pray that we will fight a good fight, finish the race and keep the faith...

On my birthday last month, I received from my Uncle Leo a most precious gift... It was my departed Lolo Francisco's scrapbook of his favorite poems, faded pictures and notes about my Papa Ernesto, my mama and of us brothers and sisters, and chronicles of major events in our lives...  I have never seen this scrapbok before but I do remember the poems lolo recited to me when I was a child on those balmy afternoons while watching the changing hues of the sky as the sun set in the horizon. As I leafed through the brown, crisp pages, the memories of my lolo, lola, papa and other departed family, friends and relatives were relived in my reverie...

To give you a glimpse of this precious moment, and to honor our dead while at the same time celebrating our own earthly journey, called LIFE, may I share with you my lolo's favorite poem: "A Psalm of Life" by Henry W. Longfellow:

A Psalm of Life:  

What the Heart of the Young Man Said to the Psalmist 

from Voices of the Night  

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

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Tell me not, in mournful numbers, 

Life is but an empty dream! 

For the soul is dead that slumbers, 

And things are not what they seem. 

Life is real! Life is earnest! 

And the grave is not its goal; 

Dust thou art, to dust returnest, 

Was not spoken of the soul.  

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow, 

Is our destined end or way; 

But to act, that each to-morrow 

Find us farther than to-day.   

Art is long, and Time is fleeting, 

And our hearts, though stout and brave, 

Still, like muffled drums, are beating 

Funeral marches to the grave.   

In the world's broad field of battle, 

In the bivouac of Life, 

Be not like dumb, driven cattle! 

Be a hero in the strife!   

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant! 

Let the dead Past bury its dead! 

Act,--act in the living Present! 

Heart within, and God o'erhead!   

Lives of great men all remind us 

We can make our lives sublime, 

And, departing, leave behind us 

Footprints on the sands of time;--   

Footprints, that perhaps another, 

Sailing o'er life's solemn main, 

A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, 

Seeing, shall take heart again.   

Let us, then, be up and doing, 

With a heart for any fate; 

Still achieving, still pursuing, 

Learn to labor and to wait.