REMEMBER, REMEMBER, THE FIRST OF NOVEMBER

It was a cold and rainy November 1st in 2003. I was in a crowded public cemetery, and the place was littered with wilting flowers, melting candles, and people carrying containers of food and a plethora of plastic chairs as if they were heading to a Sunday picnic or preparing for the apocalypse. The wind had a dizzying smell--a concoction of smoke, sweat, wet grass, ketchup-doused spaghetti, and possibly, rotting corpses. The ground was sticky with mud and small puddles of water were in every corner of the cemetery like dangerous open manholes on main roads.

Small droplets of rain were pounding down on my umbrella and on the brown acoustic guitar safely tucked beneath Marvin's arms. A former addict who has become one of our church's main musicians after he was baptized, Marvin was my guitarist for that day. He was a tall, lanky guy whose upper teeth has ceased to become part of his anatomy. But what he lacked in teeth, he made up for it with his mad guitar skills.

Marvin was a pretty talkative guy for someone who wore full-on dentures. He kept on yammering about the songs on our list and asking me if I've memorized all the lyrics by heart. I did not because a.) I was not exactly thrilled about singing for people who would rather be left alone with their scented candles and their dead and b.) I am not a good singer. However, the guitar man was overly enthusiastic about playing music in front of greying tombstones, so I said yes even when I only knew three songs from our list. Our mission was to sing for dead people and their dearest families to solicit donations for a religious group of which I was once an active member.

I do not have a great singing voice, but Marvin was the kind of guitarist who would tell you that you sing like an angel even when in reality, you sing like a bullfrog that swallowed Anne Curtis for lunch. He was the cheerleader you never wanted to have. Once, in a church meeting in preparation for an upcoming wedding, Marvin boldly suggested to our minister that I should be one of the wedding singers. Our minister, who was not exactly gifted with tact, told the whole congregation that my voice was more ideal for funerals.

Yes, I was the official funeral singer for our church. Whenever someone from our church or a member's relative dies, I am the one assigned to sing somber songs during the wake. They would have me standing near the coffin singing one sedate and reflective song after another as a send-off to the departed. Singing during wakes was not something that I really enjoyed doing because I have always been terrified of corpses in caskets. Embalmed bodies of strangers scare me. Who isn't, anyway?

Once during a church member's father's wake, I had no choice but to stand close to the coffin because the room was packed with mourning relatives. It was an open casket, so I tried my best not to look at the dead man's face. I forced myself to focus on the purple coffin, which was used to give the room a sort of soothing effect, but in my peripheral vision, I could still see the corpse's face covered in crude makeup. I looked at the face, and then I looked at the purple coffin. Soothe me, scare me, soothe me.

Singing for the dead and their living relatives at cemeteries is not exactly easy especially when they know that you are going to have them take out coins from their purses after a couple of songs. Most of the time, people would shoo us away before Marvin could even strum his guitar. "Go away," they would say. "It is for the church," Marvin would say. "I want to go home," I'd say.

However, there were also those who were willing to let us sing for them in exchange for small donations. Marvin was extremely happy with these people that he would encourage them to give their song requests as if I were a karaoke machine ready to spew out songs for money. Today, however, I realized that I was, in fact, a karaoke machine for the church.

Marvin's enthusiasm about asking for donations for the church was so overwhelming that he would sometimes forget that the people who were donating even without asking me to sing were actually doing us a favor. He would insist that we should at least sing them a couple of lines even when it was obvious that the guy who just gave us his money would want nothing more than to mourn in peace. One time, because he was overeager to sit on a tombstone so that he could play the guitar properly, Marvin knocked off a burning candle setting a bouquet of flowers on fire.

With Marvin's urging, some cemetery visitors would even request songs that were not part of our list.

"Do you know the song," Marvin asked.

"No."

"Can you sing it with made-up lyrics?" He whispered.

"Nope."

"But it's for the church."

I was not ready to sing songs outside our cemetery playlist, and I thought I have avoided an awkward situation from refusing to sing songs I was not familiar with. But the most awkward moment in all my cemetery singing experience came when an old lady, somewhat in her mid-forties, requested for us to sing "Hindi Kita Malilimutan." You know that old Basil Valdez timeless classic that has been the official theme song for funerals?

She was wearing an all-black ensemble complete with a wide-brim hat that reminded me of the hats women wear in bad films set in the Victorian-era. She was sitting with her arms folded across her chest while her six-year-old son played with a lighter trying to burn the ants crawling on the top of his father's grave.

"Can you sing 'Hindi Kita Malilimutan?'" The woman asked.

Marvin nodded his head very vigorously that I got worried it might fall off his neck. It was on our list, but before I could protest about not knowing its full lyrics, Marvin already played his guitar.

I was already hoarse from singing sentimental Christian songs the whole afternoon, but the woman, who was crying uncontrollably, did not care even when I was already losing my voice during the chorus. She was wailing so loud that it deeply alarmed me. If there were police in the area, they would most likely suspect that we were harassing the woman for her money. Her child, completely oblivious to the chaos that was taking place, started setting dry leaves on fire after getting bored with the ants. The woman, on the other hand, was in deep mourning because she was crying so loud that she did not mind that I, forgetting the lyrics, was already screwing up the words of the song.

I looked at Marvin and gave him the look that said, "Stop playing!" But he just stared at me with a wide grin on his face as if he was having his finest cemetery moment. After the song, the woman approached and hugged us, which alarmed me further because I was not really into receiving hugs from strangers, especially from one who wore clothing from another era. She thanked us profusely and gave us a five hundred peso bill, which was the highest amount someone has given us for that day.

"You made up those lyrics so badly," said Marvin once we were out of the woman's earshot.

"Shut up,"  I said. "It's for the church."