Funerals in a culturally Catholic Cebu, Philippines meant nine nights of prayer followed by a burial on the morning of the tenth day. This is called a novena. My great aunt had passed away toward the end of my time in the Philippines, and testament to the woman that she was, her novena was well-attended; each night, we gathered at Mama Concepcion’s house to pray and prepare food for each other.

My great aunt’s burial was even more heavily attended, and on the traditional trek to the cemetery, my sandal prints were indistinguishable amongst many others—even paw prints. Walking beside me, I observed a little girl (perhaps my cousin, but at this point, I wasn’t sure who was related to whom) share some food with the four-legged friends looking for a bite to eat. I watched as she reached her chubby hand towards a stray, and without touching, allowed the dog to sniff her open palm.

The first stop on our walk to the cemetery was the church to pray one last time. I clung to my aunt Tita Oding’s side, and even after nine nights of practice, I still struggled to follow the service, drowning in a Porohanon much deeper than I was exposed to in the U.S. Porohanon is a language unique to the island of Poro, one of four islands that comprise the Camotes Islands, located off the coast of mainland Cebu in Central Philippines. Born and raised on Poro, my parents and four older brothers spoke Porohanon as their first language, and I wished they were here with me. I felt lost in the heat—lost in a language and family I was still learning.

I didn’t have to understand, however, all the words to the prayers to know what I needed to do. When the congregation kneeled, I kneeled. When everyone sang, I hummed the melody and followed the gestures of my aunts as we held our hands up, cradling the air in front of us as if in offering.

From the church, we walked along the southern edge of Poro. The bumpy trail was covered with plum rinds and gravel—plumeria petals a sure sign we were getting closer to the cemetery. We passed the places of my bedtime stories: the small power plant where my brothers played their familiar games of catching spiders only to let them go, and the small resort adjacent to Buho Rock where my mother and Mama Concepcion stayed up all night laughing, or so Mama Concepcion loves to recount.

We passed my eldest brother’s junior high school and I allowed myself to play my own familiar game imagining what it would have been like if I grew up on this island too. What if I had stood witness to storm clouds that briefly glow golden or stood sheltered under puffy, passing clouds? If all I had known were Sunday morning markets of fresh fruit with my mother carefully holding my hand, I think I would have been too scared to cross the comforting ocean that lulled the island of Poro, cradling it away from the rest of the world.

At the cemetery, I whispered sorry with each step, every inch of land occupied. I contemplated the utility of the barbed wire surrounding the cemetery as my cousins and I slipped in; it wasn’t keeping anyone out nor could it hardly contain the many graves stacked on this small plot of land.

Though unfortunate in the circumstance, I met many of my relatives during my great aunt’s novena, and I met even more of my relatives here at the cemetery. Whenever I met a relative older than me, they would hold their hand out towards me and I would press the flats of their fingers to my forehead in a sign of respect. Unsure of what to do when Tita Oding showed me my grandparents and uncle laid to rest next to each other, I brushed my fingers against the rough concrete of their graves.

The families in Poro seemed to be laid to rest together as I inspected the surnames surrounding me. This reminded me of the way the neighborhoods were organized in Poro, with families choosing to build their houses close together. My parents’ own cement home was constructed on the lawn of my cousin Rhea’s house, which was just a few feet away from her father, my uncle Papa Regino’s, house, whose coconuts fell by my cousin Jhung’s house, whose baby daughter could run a few feet to her grandmother, Mama Concepcion’s, house—and I was never sure whose chickens belonged to whom. My family’s cement home was now abandoned and doorless, devoid of life except for the jackfruit my eldest brother had planted in the front yard, still blooming.