On behalf of my family, I want to express our sincerest appreciation for Albert Manalo, Family Service Advisor at Calvary Catholic Cemetery, and his admin, Martha, for the caring and professional manner in which they provided exemplary service to our family during this very difficult time, during the passing of my aunt to be with our Heavenly Father.
Albert's heartfelt guidance, compassion, sincere expressions of sympathy, hard-work, responsiveness, efficiency, kindness, passion, and dedication is genuinely appreciated. The extra measures of assistance that Albert provided us is prized and will not be forgotten. I am amazed at the level of patience that he had with us, over the course of a month, as we stumbled along, seemingly in a fog, at times.
My aunt was given hours to live by her medical team, at the beginning of June. So, as my cousins were focused on being bedside with their mom during her final moments, I was frantically trying to research funeral options for my aunt, on behalf of my cousins. My aunt fought for every ounce of life, and hours turned into days, and to everyone's astonishment, days turned into several weeks.
Albert valued and empathized with our grief and, without judgement, and with an abundance of patience, he allowed us to get through the funeral planning process at our own pace and schedule, respecting the fact that my aunt was at end of life, and he was very attentive and extremely responsive to the numerous emails, texts, calls, and questions that we had for him along the way.
Given the urgency at times, of her passing taking place at any moment, and direct burial services still to be finalized and questions answered, he graciously made himself available even on his days off. I can't even imagine how challenging it is for him and his family that he is constantly on standby to receive urgent calls, but he handled it with such grace.
Once we had a funeral service burial plan in place, Albert was very diligent and proactive in frequently providing status updates to me with respect to all aspects of the burial service planning process, and timelines; the field crew preparing my aunt's burial site, the documentation process, next steps, etc., which I appreciated immensely. That then allowed me to be able to provide status updates to my cousins, and that provided them with a sense of peace that all was being handled with diligence.
I don't think, during what was such a difficult and emotionally exhausting time for all of us, we could have had any other Family Service Advisor take better care of us and my aunt, than Albert Manalo.
Albert is very good at what he does. His heart is truly in it and he loves serving families and the community. It is refreshing to know that he is not commission oriented. He is very much customer service and compassion oriented, and his work exemplifies it. The amount of time that he selflessly poured into helping our family reflects that.
He did not try to sell us funeral services that we did not need. He respectfully listened to my cousins' desires for their mother to be buried along with their grandmother and he went above and beyond to accommodate that request. When learning that Albert can help accommodate this request, my cousin and I were profoundly emotionally touched by the sentimental value in having her mom be laid to rest with her grandmother; so deeply touched that she and I both cried tears of joy in that precious moment.
At a time when our family needed support, Albert Manalo was there for us to provide that incredibly valuable support.
The burial service was beautiful and memorable. The care, compassion, dignity and upmost respect that Albert and Martha showed is truly appreciated and should be benchmark in the funeral service business. Never having gone through the experience before, I can just tell you that Albert and Martha made it so much easier; there was always a sense of calm with the genuine caring.
Albert has a special talent and it takes a very special kind of person to do his job so wonderfully, filled with love and passion to serve the community and a kind heart to make a beautiful difference. His high caliber of excellence was beyond my expectations. He was Godsent. We are grateful to God for Albert's dedication to serving our family. We wanted to make sure that the community knows how much Albert is valued and appreciated.
I know that Albert and Calvary Catholic Cemetery will continue to be a premier funeral service provider for years to come.
May God continue to bless Albert Manalo, Martha, and Calvary Catholic Cemetery in their work, because it is so important to our community and to so many families. read more