OH, CLAUDIA

FLOWERS and blown-up news clippings festooned the grave site of Cebuana sexy star Claudia Zobel at the Queen City Memorial Garden in Cebu City.
When her body was exhumed in September,  29 years after her death,  relatives were surprised to find it well preserved and her features still recognizable.
Caretakers said the air-tight casket was a factor.
The actress, whose real name was Thelma Maloloy-on, and her father are now buried in the same tomb.
A tent was set up for family visitors.
Claudia was 18 when she was killed in a car crash in Manila.   She was at the wheel of a Mitsubishi sedan driving three friends in Pasong Tamo when the car collided with another vehicle.
Her headstone is engraved with titles of her movies and the observation that “It had been a fast and short life for one of the most promising actresses of the ’80s.”
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Arsenia Fuentes, 50, climbed up four rows of concrete vaults to apply a coat of  fresh blue paint on the tomb of her son who passed away last April.
She still grieves when remembering 17-year-old June Lord, who died of a brain tumor.
“I can’t understand why he was taken from me by God,” she said in tears at the St. Joseph  cemetery in Guizo, Mandaue city.
The boy fainted at home and complained of a headache last March. It was Arsenia’s birthday, and she was in church lighting candles,
Doctors discovered the brain tumor, which caused June Lord to fall into a coma.  He died 13 days after being rushed to a hospital in Cebu City. Reporter Jucell Marie P. Cuyos
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BOYS EARN
For some kids, All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day are an opportunity to earn  extra money for Christmas.
They repaint tombs for P40 to P50 each at the Mandaue city public cemetery.
Paul Vincent Booc and his cousin Aman Jay Booc, both 13 years old, earned P400 with  half a day’s work yesterday.
The boys from barangays Basak and Maguikay in Mandaue City started painting three years ago to help their families.
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Empty water jugs were placed in Cebu city’s five major cemeteries for donations for  the “Piso Mo, Hospital Ko” campaign.
A video of the October 15 earthquake explaining the goal of building a new city hospital after the CCMC was damaged in the calamity, played on a TV flatscreen.
In Calamba public cemetery,  42-year-old Arlene Lumayno, a City Hall employee, manned the  campaign table.
“I want to help because I gave birth to my three children in the city hospital.  It’s a big loss for poor families like mine,” she said.
Lumayno volunteered for the task even though she doesn’t work in the public information office.
Mayor Michael Rama passed by and dropped P200.
“I’m happy to see all public assistance centers were established and police are visible.  We see the spirit of bayanihan and volunteerism today,” he said.
Donation receptacles were set up in Queen City Memorial Gardens, Cempark and public cemeteries of Pardo and Carreta. Corresopndent  Jose Santino Bunachita
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Tombstone maker Edgar Caritero, 46, and his family live in a one-room shanty in Carreta cemetery.
With no electricity or toilet facilities, this has been home for 23 years for the Negros migrant who came to Cebu with no money or skills.
He learned to cut letters on gravestones or “lapida” in a shop.
“Alegre diri.  Bahala ug walay’ ganansaya kay daghan man tao mobisita,” he said describing the revelry in the cemetery on Nov. 1 and 2.
(It’s alive here. Never mind if we don’t make a big profit because many people visit.)
It takes a week to make a “lapida”.  His wife is hired by families to maintain grave lots for P100 a month. Correspondent Christine Estrella
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For security reasons, siblings of Alona Ecleo don’t visit her grave on Nov. 1 and 2 in South Memorial Gardens in Talisay City.
She was murdered in 2002 but the mastermind, her husband Ruben Ecleo, cult leader and former congressman, remains at large after he was convicted of the crime in  2012.
The graves also hold the remains of Alona’s two siblings and her parents, who were shot dead by assassins in the victims’ home in Mandaue City, a blatant  attempt to cow the family into silence.
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No one has seen Jacqueline Chiong since she was kidnapped along with her sister Marijoy 16 years ago outside the  Ayala mall.
But her parents put up photos of both girls in a bone chamber containing Marijoy’s remains in the Alliance of Two Hearts Parish in Cebu City.
“It’s very difficult if you’re unable to see even the dead body of Jacky.  There’s no closure,” said their mother, Thelma.
The parents yesterday lit incense and offered prayers.
Seven young men were convicted for the crime, and are serving life terms in the national state penitentiary in Muntinglupa, except for  Paco Larrañaga, who was transferred to a Spanish jail due to his dual citizenship.
Dionisio, the father, said Jacqueline appeared to him in dreams which he took to mean that she was dead.
“We have to accept what happened so that we will have peace of mind,” he said. Reporter Ador Vincent Mayol