Mandaluyong’s cemetery a ‘one-stop shop’ for death services

MANILA, Philippines - Three years ago, Mandaluyong City’s public cemetery was nearly full, with tombs piled high on top of one another, and tiny graves of children scattered everywhere, even along walkways.

“People buried their dead in every space they could find, or even destroyed the niches, pulled the bones out, and placed their departed loved ones there. Every space was almost occupied, plus the fact that you got at an average of close to 1,000 burials a year, and storage of about 4,000 bones,” Mayor Benhur Abalos said.

The 2.7-hectare cemetery has 5,744 apartment niches; 1,720 bone crypts and 253 private “apartments.” As of June this year, 65.1 percent or 5,024 of the cemetery’s total capacity of 7,717 was occupied. With an average of 913 deaths a year since 2004, the cemetery was expected to be full in 10 years, and capacity was not the only problem.

To optimize the land area, Abalos decided to have the old cemetery transformed into a “one-stop shop” that offers four services for the dead. The facility he named “Garden of Life Park” has a cemetery, an environment-friendly crematorium, two columbaria and a chapel.

Located in Barangay Vergara, the once dark and squalid cemetery has metamorphosed into a neat, and well-lighted park with a serene landscape and picnic area for visitors. The mayor takes pride in the Garden of Life Park, being the first of its kind in the Philippines run by a local government.

“I purposely made that to erase the old concept of a scary, dark and ghostly cemetery. A cemetery should be synonymous with paradise, with heaven, with God. That is the image I would like to give our people. Let’s show something positive and with love in it,” Abalos said.

The Garden of Life Park has 5,744 apartment niches, 1,720 bone crypts, 253 private apartments, and two columbaria – one with 2,990 ossuaries, the other having 1,025.

To prevent congestion, the city government limits the stay of the dead to just five years to allow room for other families needing burial spaces. Abalos said after five years, the families are given the option to transfer the remains of their deceased or have them cremated.