Every year during Valentine’s Day, memorial parks teem with visitors. Families from all walks of life spend their day in the sun, with mats neatly laid down in the grass and picnic baskets lying all around as the children frolic nearby. You’d think, these parks only get filled with people during All-Saints’ Day and All-Souls’ Day, two of many Filipino traditional holidays, but no. The day of hearts, it seems, have come to successfully embrace and include lost loved ones in its celebration. I can only imagine all the departed souls so happy on this day and beaming with satisfaction.
Out on the street or inside shopping malls, it’s common to encounter teens carrying bunched-up flowers (roses mostly). These young men hurry up to meet with their dates and the beaming young ladies, after receiving their bouquets, hold these ever so delicately, cradling them proudly as though they were infants. Old people can only sigh, ah young love.
Restaurants and other food establishments will be full on this, the year’s heart day. If one is lucky, you might even spy countless bouquets of all sizes propped up on extra chairs, as though they were trophies displayed for all to see while the merry crowd dines. We smile as we say, at no other time are these dining places doubling up as flower shops. Perhaps, the same is so during graduation day. However, hands down, nothing compares to V-Day.
At a nearby table, seniors having coffee are having a field day. One is humming ‘those were the days my friend’ with a much louder addition of ‘we thought they’d never end.’ And others laugh heartily at their own predicament. One elderly widow laments that he never brings me flowers anymore. And with a wry smile she quips, in fact, I’m the one who now brings him flowers every Sunday. At that, every Sunday, even at all memorial parks everywhere, might as well be Valentine’s Day.
