Funerals and rainbows do not reconcile. We think of death and we think of ventilated skeletons and ear-to-ear grins of eyeless skulls. We think of rainbows and we see a Lotus land with a charm of a fairy tale legend.
Until the early 20th century, however, funerals and rainbows were exactly like that—cemeteries were places to relax and reminisce beside a loved one’s grave. Picnics at cemeteries were popular; birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays were reasons for merriment and perfect opportunity to get well out of the daily familiarity. The cemeteries were designed to be parks on rolling hills with landscaped grounds.
Family mausoleums, soaring monuments molded into angels, obelisks, and miscellaneous symbolic icons—anchor with a broken chain meant end of life, broken columns were lives cut short, a dove was a travel to heaven, candles symbolized spirits of the soul, a weeping willow tree meant sadness, hand with a finger pointed upward meant road to heaven—dotted the cemeteries.
There were graves that told of the dead one’s personal identity or preference as grave markers—car, motorcycle, favorite toy, piano, and other objects.
In the 1830s, burial grounds were located out of town. Well-to-do families buried their dead in churchyards within the town proper; the poor got buried in public cemeteries, farmers were simply buried on their farms. Coffins were positioned atop each grave when the area filled up. The rains would make the ground weak and wash out the graves into the road.
Limited land areas to accommodate an increasing number of the dead necessitated measures to work out the problem. A crematorium was one solution where the ashes of the dead were sealed in an urn and kept in a vault or house altar, thus saving space. Others opted to have their dead one’s ashes dispersed by ocean winds for a burial at sea. Imaginative minds turned the ashes into wearable jewelry and pendants thus giving the sense of still being a virtual companion.
There are other ways to honor the dead and immortalize the memory of them and at the same time do something to preserve the Earth—through green burials. An unembalmed body is buried in the ground inside a wooden box or cardboard with a sapling on top of it. As the body decays and returns to nature, the sapling grows to be a tree, nurtured by a soil inter-blended with the ashes of the dead. Imagine all the robust trees to green the Earth!
While some cemeteries have become places of restful stillness and contemplation, other sites have become abandoned, creepy places, with twisted trees growing out of cracks in open graves, emptied of human presence but full of ghosts.
In various parts of the Philippines, cemeteries that once thrived are now hidden away forever.
In Camiguin is a large cross marking the site where a Spanish era graveyard in the 1800s sank 20-feet below during a volcanic eruption. Tombstones can be seen only by snorkeling. Another cemetery by the shore of Paras Beach Resort collapsed and sank in 1871 after another volcanic eruption.
There are also cemeteries which may be considered unique for their unusual details and historical importance.
The Manila Chinese Cemetery is the second oldest in the country. The idea of a Chinese cemetery came from Don Carlos Palanca during the Spanish times when the Catholic Church would not allow Chinese people to be buried together with the Catholics.
For over 2,000 years, the Igorots have revered their dead by keeping them in coffins hanging in the limestone cliffs in Sagada with ropes and wires. The bodies were placed in a fetal position.
The Familia Luzuriaga Cemetery is located at the intersection of two highways in Bacolod—Lopez Jaena Street and Burgos Street—and is known as “Bangga Patyo” or cemetery corner.
A deathly gravestone at Malabon Cemetery is a popular site during All Saints Day. It is a sculpture depicting the battle between the devil and the Archangel Michael, with the devil surmounting the angel—a wish on Simeon Bernardo’s deathbed who died of a heart attack in 1934.
The Paco Park Cemetery built in 1822 by the Dominicans, enclosed by a circular wall and a domed chapel, was intended as a burial place for rich Spanish families. After Jose Rizal’s death by firing squad in Bagumbayan, he was initially buried there. Others who were also buried at Paco Park Cemetery were Cavite’s martyr priests: Mariano Gomez, Jose Burgos, and Jacinto Zamora, also known as “Gomburza.”
But for some authentic historical lesson about the exceptional, almost bizarre, peculiarity of spending some time in someone else’s culture and time, a visit to Nagcarlan’s underground cemetery brings a fresh insight into the pride-rich heritage and endurance of the Filipinos.
No one should come to Nagcarlan, Laguna without visiting Barangay Bambang where the Nagcarlan Underground Cemetery and Museum serenely rests.
Founded centuries ago on a one-hectare land in the shadows of the brooding but magnificent Mt. San Cristobal, under the supervision of Franciscan priest Vicente Velloc, it was intended for use exclusively by Spanish friars, prominent town citizens, and members of elite Catholic families. It is a place waiting to be rediscovered, it being the only cemetery in the country that is located underground.
The Baroque-style cemetery is owned by the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Pablo, Laguna. It has a circular shape, surrounded by octagonal stone walls carved with intricate patterns, red tiles, wrought-iron grills. Funeral masses are conducted in the chapel which has a domed ceiling.
The underground graveyard is located 15-feet below the chapel where 36 tombs are arranged in four walls. To reach the crypt below, a visitor must take a flight of steps with inscriptions in Spanish on each rung.
“Go forth, mortal man, full of life/ Today you visit happily this shelter/ But after you have gone out/ Remember, you have a resting place here/ Prepared for you.”
The cemetery has 240 apartment-type niches on the walls. Each side of the chapel contains 120 niches. There are a total of 276 niches in the cemetery.
During the Philippine Revolution in 1896, leaders of the Katipunan, together with Pedro Paterno and Gen. Severino Taino, used the cemetery as a meeting place where they planned and finalized the Pact of Biak-na-Bato in 1897.
During the Philippine-American War and World War II, the cemetery served as the townspeople shelter from the armed conflicts.
The Nagcarlan Underground Cemetery and Museum was declared as a national landmark by PD No. 260, and amended by the Adm. Order #1505 in 1978. Thereafter, no more burials were allowed in the cemetery. The oldest tomb is dated 1886.
As you enter the chapel you can imagine priests mumbling prayers and choir boys chanting echoing off the walls, linking the living and the dead in a heavenly realm. The cemetery is richly green, warm when there is clear sunlight, and gloomy when the clouds get ominously dark. It continues to remind us of the sad yet romantic air of a place that has once been of importance and exists today in the recollection of an illustrious past.
We look at how well historic places have withstood mass tourism, people’s remissness, wrack and ruin of nature, urbanization’s wrecking balls; and we see Nagcarlan Underground Cemetery holding up impressively. It gets under our skin, lets us acknowledge our own dead end, teaches us that family legends and roots are important however misted they are by time.
Photos by Diana B. Noche
