3 MIN READ

By KURT ZEUS DIZON
www.nordis.net

I grew up in a cemetery. Not in the literal sense of leaving among the dead, but my whole childhood revolves around it. 

My grandfather served as the caretaker of the city cemetery for more than forty years. Through this work, he raised six children—my father, my aunt, and my uncles. He sent them all to school, ensured they finished college, and provided them with private education that shaped their success. His work, though often unseen and uncelebrated, carried dignity, and we saw in him an immense and quiet pride.

As his only grandchild and the one who was always with him, I would accompany him during school breaks or on days without classes. He did not ask whether I wanted to work; he simply pointed to a tomb or a mausoleum and instructed me to clean. And I did—from elementary all the way to my first year of college.

This February marked my grandfather’s birth month. As I cleaned his grave, I felt the quiet weight of inheritance, not only of memory, but of responsibility. After tending to his tomb, I found myself energized, as if reminded to follow my childhood routine. I remembered another grave I had long intended to clean. I stopped at a name that, for many in the Cordilleras, is not merely a name: John C. Early.

Early was one of the most beloved American governors assigned to the Cordillera in the early twentieth century. His life and work were carefully reconstructed and immortalized in scholarship, particularly through the efforts of Dr. Shelton Woods, who will visit Baguio this March. 

Early’s story, however, is more complex than simple admiration. His life resurfaces in a forthcoming lecture by Dr. Woods at Saint Louis University (March 10) that revisits America’s first decade of rule in the Philippines, when Dean Worcester, then Secretary of the Interior, exercised near-absolute authority over the Cordillera region of Luzon and its people.

At a time when few dared to challenge power, an obscure American teacher—John Chrysostom Early—stood against policies he believed exploited and brutalized Luzon’s highlanders. The forgotten story of Early sheds new light on American policies, both exploitative and benign, toward the highland population.

For years, however, there was a striking irony that while his legacy lived on in books and narratives, his physical grave was missing—its location uncertain, almost symbolic of how history can remember and yet forget at the same time. It was only in 2023 that his tomb was finally identified. Through our correspondence with Dr. Woods, he told me that an individual named Mike had taken the initiative to search for the grave. With the help of cemetery workers, including Vince, whom I personally know, the tomb was eventually located. What was once written about as “lost” in earlier accounts had, at last, been found.

Yet even after being found, the grave remains largely unattended.

Standing before it, brush in hand, I wondered how a governor once described as beloved by the Igorot people could lie in quiet neglect. There are no known relatives to tend to his resting place. History remembers him; the earth does not.

The philosopher Martin Heidegger once said that “(we) should spend more time in graveyards”. He further wrote that human beings are “beings-toward-death.” Death is not merely an event; it is a condition that gives meaning to our existence. Cemeteries, then, are not simply spaces of mourning but places of confrontation—where memory, time, and responsibility meet. To visit and clean a grave is not just maintenance; it is an act of recognition. It is a quiet refusal to let memory decay.

As time passes, even the most beloved figures risk fading into abstraction. We discuss them in class, commemorate them in speeches, cite them in books, and invoke their names at conferences. In doing so, we speak of heritage—of cultural memory, of shared history, of identity. But heritage is not only intellectual; it is also material. It lives not only in archives and narratives, but in places, in stones, in the quiet spaces where memory rests. Sometimes, safeguarding heritage can be as simple and as humble as cleaning one’s grave.

I believe that cleaning John C. Early’s tomb was a small gesture—perhaps insignificant to many. But in that moment, it felt like a moral obligation. If we claim that history matters, then the spaces where history rests should matter too.

Perhaps this is what my grandfather silently taught me all those years: that remembrance is work. And sometimes, the work of memory and heritage begins with a broomstick and the willingness to care.#nordis.net