Don't be in a hurry when marking grave plots

Last Friday, Tom was looking for an important piece of paper that had been on the desk for a couple of weeks. This piece of paper had the name of a person that had died; the site in the cemetery where he was supposed to bury the person’s cremation remains the next day, and the time that the family would be at the cemetery. The desk is usually loaded with so many different documents that I was sure he would find it. No such luck.

I helped to look for it by picking through the garbage can and the sacks of recycling on the porch. No luck. While I was searching high and low for the piece of paper, I saw that Tom was calmly sitting doing the crossword puzzle. I decided to quit looking for the paper, as it didn’t seem to be bothering him that it was lost. I also had the thought that he hasn’t left anyone unburied yet and he will get these remains buried too.

He did call two mortuaries to see if they were handling the remains and they weren’t. The person who had called him about the cremation marks the graves at the cemetery where the cremation hole was to be dug. She is a very organized person and had given Tom a computer print out of the map of the cemetery and the location of where to dig the hole. This was the paper that was missing. She also had told Tom that she had marked the site at the cemetery with spray paint. Tom called her and left a message on her answering machine. His main concern was being at the cemetery at the right time. He didn’t seem worried about this as he was digging a grave in a cemetery that bordered the cemetery that the cremation hole was going to be.

I said, “Well that cemetery where you have to dig the cremation at is big, but it’s not Arlington. You will find the spray paint mark.”

The woman called at 10 p.m. that night and she understood about Tom misplacing the paper. She gave the time that the family would be at the cemetery and where the hole should be dug. All went well the next day and Tom still holds with his record of not leaving any remains unburied.

I dug graves with Tom for two and a half years. A couple of times we dug graves in the wrong location. This wasn’t our fault, but the person who marked the graves, the sexton of the cemetery. One incident of burying someone in the wrong spot happened a couple of years back on a beautiful spring day. Andy, the sexton of St. Timothy’s Cemetery was in a hurry to mark the grave we were going to be digging, as he was heading out on a trip with his wife. I knew where the deceased, Louise’s grave marker was, as her husband was already buried. I had known Louise and her husband, Bud. Andy showed up at the cemetery while Tom and I were standing by the deceased headstone. Now Andy usually checks his map of the cemetery plots to determine the gravesite and locates what side of the headstone the grave should be dug on. But on this day Andy was thinking more of his trip with his wife and he didn’t pull out the cemetery map. He told us to dig Louise’s grave on the west side of the gravestone. Tom and I used a metal probe to find her husband’s vault and Andy marked out the grave plot with a wooden frame. He left right away, as his wife was all packed up and waiting for him at home to get going on their trip. Tom and I dug the grave and the next day returned to the cemetery to bury Louise.

A month later, Andy called Tom and told him that a woman had come out to the cemetery to put flowers on her husband’s grave and noticed that where her grave plot next to her husband’s had been disturbed and new sod put on.Andy was mowing the cemetery lawn and the woman waved him to stop and she asked, “Who is lying next to my husband in my burial plot?”

Andy, never thinking he was wrong, got out the cemetery map and walked over
to the woman’s husband’s headstone and saw that she was right. Louise was buried on the wrong side of her headstone lying in this woman’s burial plot. Tom and I had to dig Louise up, dig another grave, and we had the vault man move her vault with her casket inside with cables to her rightful spot. Fortunately the transition went smoothly.

I remember thinking that in death, Louise, got to be risqué and lie next to another woman’s husband. I wondered what Bud, her husband thought about it. I said when we placed her in the ground for the second time, “Now you can really rest in peace Louise.”