By Elmer V. Recuerdo / Correspondent
TACLOBAN CITY—She was restless that day, the eve of All Saints’ Day, when 70-year-old Clarita Cainong heard over the radio 200 crosses at the mass grave remains without the name of the dead. Carrying her 1-year-old grandchild, she went to the house of her son to share the news.
Her son Albino immediately went to a hardware store to buy a small can of black paint, a paint brush and some candles before rushing to the cemetery to write six names on the unmarked crosses, the names of two boys, two girls and the parents of the children. The mother of the children was his younger sister Cecilia who he last saw the night before
Yolanda hit the city when he tried to convince them to evacuate. Only one body of the family of six was found.
It was a mad scramble for a piece of the burial ground at the Tacloban Holy Cross Memorial Park where thousands of bodies of those who died during Yolanda were buried in a mass grave.
The scene was both disorderly and poignant. One father was shaking with anger when the grave where he put the name of his son last year was being claimed by another family. The cross is now marked with the name of another person, with candles and flowers offered to the dead.
“There is nothing permanent there. If you come earlier, you can claim one grave as your dead relative,” broadcast journalist Jeff Manibay said.
In another unmarked grave, a family was offering a prayer, when a lady came and asked to be allowed to put candles and flowers. The family allowed her and she joined in saying a prayer. When she saw somebody was trying to take a picture, she asked that her privacy be respected and no picture was taken.
The lady said she was a nurse in a private hospital and was on duty the day the typhoon made landfall. Before she left for work on the night of November 7, she brought her 5-year-old child and her maid to a public school designated as an evacuation center. The classroom was washed out during the storm surge, the body of her maid was found some 200 meters away, but her son was never seen again.
“I cannot mourn because I don’t know if my son survived or not. He could just have been brought by somebody somewhere. He might have been taken to Manila when people were being flown out of Tacloban. I cannot move on,” she said.
At a junction leading to Tacloban’s airport, a memorial was set up on November 1 with hundreds of crosses on the ground for people to offer prayers and candles for friends and relatives whose bodies were never found.
The memorial was a brainchild of Manibay and the local media group One Tacloban with the support of the local business community.
“It is not only me. Many of my neighbors lost their relatives and the bodies were never found,” said Manibay, who lost both parents to Yolanda. Their bodies remain missing.
Masses were held at the memorial ground. On All Souls’ Day, people came to offer candles, instead of going to the mass grave, because the site has better accessibility to public transport than the mass grave.
Three years after Yolanda hit Eastern Visayas, relatives of those who perished whose bodies remain missing are still hoping they may be able to find the bodies of their loves ones and be given a proper burial.
“When I go to a cemetery, I feel out of place. All other people have a grave for a relative, while I have none. There is this feeling of emptiness. Habang ang iba ay nasa puntod ng kanilang mga mahal sa buhay, ikaw wala, paikot-ikot ka lang,” he said.
Manibay said grieving is difficult when there is no body to mourn. There is no organization or support group for people who are still looking for their loved ones.
“I know some people who would like to find their dead relatives, but it may already be too late. The bodies would have already decayed so we can only rely now on DNA. We can only rely on technology to help us,” he said.
“It is easy to tell us to move on, but for us whose loved one has not yet been found it is difficult. If you don’t know where they are, there is no closure,” he said.
Government data shows over 6,000 died during Yolanda. But Manibay said the statistics only counted those bodies that were identified.
Immediately after Yolanda, a team led by forensic expert Raquel Fortun was sent to help identify the dead for proper burial. The team opened body bags one by one to systematically tag them. But after five days, the team was stopped by the National Bureau of Investigation over procedural issues in identifying the bodies.
Fortun estimated the death toll of Yolanda could have reached 18,000, way above official figures. She said some families may have all died, and nobody was left to report the missing and the dead.
Manibay said many unretrieved bodies are scattered in different fishing communities in Samar and Leyte.
“Fishing communities in Leyte and Samar know where the bodies are. The residents marked them,” he said.
He said the government should help them retrieve the bodies because it has the equipment and technical expertise to do it. “Let’s face it; only the government has the resources to do this,” he said.
“I do not know how to grieve without the body. The last images I have of my parents are when they were still alive. Our entire photo album was washed out; nothing was left. All I have is my memory. I miss them and I cry. But I cannot grieve. How do you grieve for the missing?” he said.