Loss comes in many ways. All Saints’ Day highlights the loss arising from the death of loved ones. Visiting cemeteries or columbaria in the company of other relatives of departed kin somehow eases the pain of loss.

But we who have lost our loved ones to enforced disappearance have no remains to bury or cremate – no graves or cinerary vaults to seal the certainty of our kin’s fate.

As we perpetually equivocate between hope and despair, closure becomes as elusive as justice. To calm our unsettledness, we draw support and strength from other families and friends of the disappeared.

Together with our relatives, we honor our departed kin on All Saints’ Day. Along with other human rights and civil society organizations, we gather yearly on November 2, All Souls’ Day, to remember and pay tribute to our beloved desaparecidos. Tomorrow, in our Daupang-Palad sa Undas, aside from prayers and flowers we shall also offer them patriotic songs and poems from 10:00 am to 12:00 nn at the Bantayog ng mga Bayani Memorial Center, corner Quezon Avenue and EDSA in Quezon City. (The Bantayog ng mga Desaparecido, our traditional venue at the Baclaran Redemptorist Church Grounds in Parañaque City is not available as the church complex is undergoing renovation in preparation for the Papal visit next year.)

The musical and poetic renditions are our unequivocal statement that the desaparecidos’ love of country and the causes they courageously fought for at all costs live on in our collective consciousness and memory.

We tirelessly and proudly share the stories of the desaparecidos that speak of their selfless and steadfast struggle for freedom and defense of human rights during the dark years of martial law and beyond. These stories are an indelible testimony to their heroism and martyrdom that should inspire this generation and those yet unborn to sustain the quest for truth and justice, and resist all forms of repression and oppresion that are an affront to human dignity.