Ahead of Undas, or the observance of All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day, graves, mausoleums and columbariums are cleaned by their plot owners.
Those who can’t visit their loved one’s graves, or clean up the burial site of their loved ones, however, hire the help of caretakers.
Among these caretakers are 70-year-old ‘Nanay Baby’ (mother Baby), who withheld her last name; two of her children, three grandchildren and six great grandchildren.
Nanay Baby has been cleaning gravestones all over Manila South Cemetery since 1991. She was in tandem with her husband but he died in 2020.
‘It was my husband and I who used to clean up here. But he died about 5 years ago already. Lung ailment. I let go of those graves that are far away,’ Nanay Baby said.
After 34 years of cleaning, she no longer remembers the number of plots they handled since they began this kind of work.
Since her husband died, she had let go of cleaning many of the graves.
Now, she and her family are in charge of eight to nine gravestones in Street B of the Manila South Cemetery.
This year, Nanay Baby and her family traveled all the way from Bulacan to Manila to take care of the plots in time for Undas.
They arrived in Manila on October 13 and are set to travel back on November 3.
For a little over half a month’s worth of work, and a few more days throughout the year, Nanay Baby said she is paid P1,000 to P1,200 per gravestone in a year.
The cleaning materials are bought out of their own pockets.
‘This is now our only source of income,’ she said.
Nowadays, the rate of caretakers can be as high as P300 per month or P3,600, triple of what Nanay Baby charges.
According to her, she doesn’t ask for more payment since she’s been caring for the graves for a very long time – some of the plots she has been cleaning since 1991.
During these days, her work has become a family affair.
Even in the middle of rain, her great-grandchildren – the youngest is 7 years old – were sweeping the leaves on top of the gravestones.
‘They are my companions every year as I clean up – my grandchildren, great-grandchildren’ she pointed to them with a smile.
Ironically, her husband remains in an urn at their house in Bulacan.
Nanay Baby wants to lay him to rest at a cemetery, if it were up to her.
It will be good if he is in a cemetery. But my children are against it. They want to just be with their father,’ she shared.