BACOLOD CITY — Tomorrow we honor the dead. But it is not All Souls Day. All Souls Day is Sunday. Tomorrow is All Saints Day.

And why do we honor the souls tomorrow. Because all those who died are now saints.

Today I will be in Iloilo to bury my aunt, sister of my mother, who died above 90. She just died in her sleep. I will also visit the saints in my family, my father, mother, and brother.

I will also visit my uncles and aunt on my father’s side who are 95, 93, and 90. Except for poor eyesight and hearing, everything is okay, they are mentally alert. They have all been vegetarians.

I told them they are the living saints. I like my 95-year-old uncle who told me, he will live up to 100. If there’s a will there’s a way. With my modern life style, I cannot duplicate their feat. I don’t have their self-discipline.

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I want to write today about epitaphs. An epitaph is an inscription on a tomb but also is meant to be a verse, brief enough and apt to describe or commemorate the departed.

I recall in high school, we were taught Robert Louis Stevenson, an English poet who lived in the South Sea islands due to his health.

He wrote this to be his epitaph:

“Under the wide and starry sky,/ Dig the grave and let me lie,/ Glad did I live and gladly die,/ And I laid me down with a will.

“This be the verse you crave for me./ Here lies he where he longed to be,/ Home is the sailor, home from the sea,/ And the hunter home from the hill.”

I read of another epitaph. “You are where I was,/ And I am where you will be.”

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In Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” he said better a bad epitaph than ill written things about you.

On epitaphs, American poet Robert Frost wrote, “And were an epitaph to be my story,/ I’d have a short one ready for my own,/ I would have written of me on my stone,/ I have a lover’s quarrel with the world.”

There was one wife who wrote on the tomb of her husband, “Peace be with you.” Then she signed it below. A week later she learned her husband had another wife.

She called for the fellow who chiseled the words on the marble. “I want you to add this line below the Peace be with you, “Until we meet there.” Then she signed.

Here are other well known epitaphs. John Gay wrote in his epitaph, “Life is a jest and all things show it,/ I thought so once and now I know it.

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I sat down the other day with Joey Dabao, operations manager of Steel Art, billboard provider for Visayas and Mindanao.

He reacted to our column about our call for beautifying Bacolod by regulating ad posters and billboards in the city. We wrote it in reaction to the posters plastered on the fence of the DAILY STAR.

The call, Joey said, was properly timed, because “We at Steel Arts Billboard have long advocated the need for regulation regarding outdoor advertising in Bacolod.”

In the aftermath of “Typhoon Milenyo” and “Typhoon Miriam” they made sure that they have “structurally sound and legitimate billboard structures that will stand the test of storms and typhoons and strategically placed in designated areas in the city.”

Dabao referred to the Outdoor Advertising Association of the Philippines. When he wrote of Typhoon Miriam, he referred to Senator Defensor Santiago who, he said, as usual, made us scapegoats for the toppled billboards in Manila and proposed a Senate Bill that would have killed the outdoor advertising industry in the country, but thanks to the timely organization of OAAP, it was revised and amended.”

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Yes, Joey Dabao said, there is an ordinance in the city regulating outdoor advertising authored by Councilor Catalino Alisbo. But this needs updating.

He said, his group had a pending request with Mayor Bing Leonardia for an audience to help in regulation, monitoring, and reporting of all new signs and structures.

I believe your request must have not reached him. He would be happy to sit down with you.

Let us have a beautiful city.

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