After months of controversy, a new chapter in Belize City’s history was opened today at Mile 13, Western Highway, with the inauguration and dedication of the Eternal Garden Memorial Cemetery.
There continues to be dissent concerning the proximity of the new cemetery to nearby Hattieville, doubts over why it was necessary to move so far out of the City, and objections to proposed rate increases for grave spaces at the new cemetery as well as the reuse of graves at the Lords Ridge Cemetery, which has served City residents for some 130 years.
But today, as Councilor for Public Health, Wayne Usher, and Mayor Zenaida Moya-Flowers formally unveiled the plaque marking the site, accessible by a partially graded, rehabilitated crushed-stone road – a decided improvement to the messy, marshy mess reporters waded through to access the site last July – that dissent was quieted, at least for a while.
Both Councilor Usher and the Mayor noted that this cemetery, while primarily serving the needs of City residents, will be open to all Belizeans, and will be planned to the last detail to create, according to Usher, “a place of dignity, where the dead can rest in peace.”
The Ministries of Health, Works and Natural Resources were instrumental in acquiring, approving and upgrading the site, but singled out for mention by Councilor Usher in his welcome address and by the Mayor in her keynote remarks was the Council’s own cemetery crew, led by the late Russell Neal and Andrew Bethran, who battled to keep Lords Ridge open as the new cemetery was being put together.
The primary advantage of Eternal Garden over Lords Ridge is that burials can now be done at the lawful six feet under the earth, and not three or four as with Lords Ridge, particularly the newer, filled-in areas that were susceptible to water in the grave holes.
Referencing the current disputes with the undertakers and the Hattieville residents, Councilor Usher stated that while they would work toward a solution to their problems, it was time to move on.
According to the Mayor, the cemetery crew will be trained in customer service, to act as primary liaison with the grieving family, and the non-denominational chapel to be built at the site will be open to all.
The long-awaited statutory instrument covering alternative plans for burials is expected to be finished “soon.”
The name of the new cemetery was created by Whitney Waight, whose entry was selected from a coterie of stakeholders. To the Mayor, it symbolizes the common destination of humankind despite our many and differing beliefs about what lies beyond; the peaceful and beautiful surroundings that mark the site and the opportunity it will provide, to remember and honor the dead, as is the tradition of humanity.
And while new burials will be conducted at Eternal Garden, Lords Ridge remains permanently open, both for those who wish to be buried next to loved ones there, and for those to be interred under the alternative plans, when those come into play.
Belize’s first cemetery was located in the Yarborough area. Other cemeteries can be found around the City, including a series of vaults on Queen Charlotte Street ringing a children’s playground, and even a ground for local East Indians near what is now the police checkpoint at Mile 4, Western Highway.