day of the dead

the dead. today is their day!

no, not halloween day nor the chinese’ hungry ghost day.

today is the ‘day of the dead’ or more commonly known as ‘all souls day‘, a day where christians remember thier loved ones who had gone before them.

today many people will be going to the cemeteries to offer prayers for the dead. the most well known christian cemetery in penang is at western roadwestern road cemetery is for catholics (on the left side) and protestants (on right side). there are others like those in kelawai road and penang road.

entrance of the western road jalan utama cemetery. (it is opposite the freemason building. err… western road is the old name. still not used to using jalan utama. it sounds funny anyway to refer it as ‘the jalan utama cemetery’ when all along we refer to it as ‘the western road cemetery’.)

yesterday was all saints day, a church holy day where we were obligated to attend mass. well, after mass yesterday morning at the cathedral, i, together with my mum and sister went to the western road cemetery to pay our respects to our loved ones.

the area around here, which is next to the road leading to the penang municipal park (formerly known as youth park) and a short distance away from botanical gardens, will be very crowded and full of traffic today, so if you are not one of those who are going to visit the cemetery there, try avoiding using this area.

those who wanted to go there, go early as finding a parking space would be a nightmare towards the evening. today, there will be many stalls selling flowers and candles outside the cemetery. yesterday when i went, there were only a few stalls, and i did not get a chance to take a photo of the flower stalls because we were allowed to park inside the cemetery, so no chance of walking past the stalls. whereas for today, cars will not be allowed inside the cemetery.

well, my father was buried there, and so were his parents. the other relatives i had there were my aunty (father’s sister) and her husband. i had not seen my father’s parents before as they died before i was born. i had seen my mother’s parents though, but they died when i was a little girl. they were buried in the permatang tinggi cemetery over the mainland. i had many other relatives (my mother’s side) at the permatang tinggi’s cemetery. as today is not a holiday, i have no time to go over to the mainland to pay respect for my maternal grandparents there but my mother and my brother and his family will be there.

to continue reading, please click on ‘more’ below (some other pictures there)

the graves of my grandma (left) and grandpa, with my father (right).

as you can see, my grandparents/father’s graves are very simple graves, unlike several of the others which comes in elaborate marble design, some with statues of angels or bible. like this one here, there is a statue of mary and two angels.

this is a close up of the tombstones of my grandpa and my father. well, simple we are, so simple we will go. when one is dead and gone, god doesn’t care you are rich or poor.

the graves of my aunty and uncle. left tombstone reads ‘john baptist’ and right reads ‘mary baptist’.

well, we went to light candles and pray at these 5 graves (father, grandparents and aunty, uncle), and linger a bit longer. my sister was busy cleaning up the graves of my father. after this, we went to the graves of some friends, on the way back, for a short prayer.

there was a columbarium (is that the spelling?) near the entrance of the cemetery, where ashes of the dead were placed in urns like this:

this photo above shows the front entrance of the columbarium. as candles are not allowed to be lighted inside the columbarium, so the people have to light candles outside. flowers are allowed to be placed inside the columbarium though.

note: a very ‘technical’ explanation of all souls day can be found on the catholic encyclopedia.
UPDATED: news of all souls day in penang from the star can be found here.