I wasn’t quite sure how to title this, but this has been a problem for me at all the funerals I’ve been to.
It seems to me you want a cemetary to do several things.
1)Bury or otherwise receive dead bodies in a hygienic and legal fashion
2)Provide attractive surroundings for those wishing to visit their beloved dead received as above
3)Provide a reasonable atmosphere/support for graveside services following or replacing a funeral or memorial service.
I wish to complain about the modern cemetary’s lack in the 3 rd category.
Most graveside services I’ve been to leave something to be desired. When burying these days, it seems like the cemetary staff would prefer the mourners to go away before they lower the coffin, which feels wrong, very lacking in closure. If they could just get the coffin down there so people could toss on a flower or a shovelful or dirt and then leave it would be much more satisfactory to me
I admit I probably have this vision because that’s how they do it in the movies, but the movie makers choose to do it that way because it’s more dramatically pleasing. I mean why bother if you’re not going to do it in a satisfying way?
I don’t care what’s easiest for the cemetary staff. If we want to do what’s easiest, we could just leave loved ones out on the curb and call solid waste cadaver services for pickup.
And what’s with astroturf covering the dug up dirt? Is that a comfort to anybody? It’s not like you don’t know the dirt is there.
This is all on my mind though because of my grandparents’ funeral this weekend. They had to be all romantic and die within a day of each other.
They made their funeral arrangements years ago. I can only imagine they did not realize what the “graveside” service would be like or they never would’ve chosen it.
They had chosen a “mausoleum” rather than be buried. I really didn’t know about this option. It’s kind of like the columbariums for cremated remains. It’s a large …building… structure?? with many two coffin (head to head) sized spaces. A marble slab fits over which had the name and date information. So it ends up being a large marble wall with approx. 3 ft by 5 ft squares going about 6 or 7 up and maybe 20 or more across.
I don’t know if I’ve described it well. Anyway, the family was off to the side on a sidewalk because all the space in front was taken up by the coffin lifting equipment. The priest did his bit then stood back while guys in jeans and t-shirts took over. There was much clanging and whirring as each coffin was placed and raised and then sort of clunkingly slid into place. Then there was the ceremonial caulking done with the traditional funereal caulking gun. Then the marble slab was placed and there was some power screwdrving to affix it.
Then we all left. I can’t imagine this is what my grandparents had in mine.
My sympathies on the loss of your grandparents. My great-grandparents were married 66 years and also died within a short period of time of each other.
All of my relatives have been buried, with a short service at the graveside. The dirt was covered by astroturf and we did walk away before the body was lowered into the ground. I guess they want to obscure the harshness of the realities of it??
To that end, I am surprised that they did so much of the mechanics of putting the coffins in the mausoleum. Caulking and driving screws? Odd.
My cousing was cremated and buried with a little plaque before the graveside service. That was a little unreal because there was so little there to take in.
carlotta I’m not sure what you are complaining about. It seems you think the coffin should be lowered into the grave with the family present so they can throw dirt on the coffin? Why on Earth (HAH!) would that be necessarily a comfort?
It sounds like your grandparents (sorry for your loss by the way) had the mausoleum equivalent to that yet you didn’t like that either. I’ll agree that the placing of the coffins would be better done afterward when everyone was gone. Why is lowering the coffin into the grave, covering it with dirt and replacing the sod after everyone is gone any different? I mean, it’s a given fact the loved one is about to be buried, so why the need to watch it?
Why on earth would cemetery employees be wearing jeans and t-shirts? That seems terribly disrespectful to me.
We placed flowers and/or clods on the coffins while they were at the graveside (but not lowered in) at my grandparents’ funerals. It was definitely better than what you describe.
Were you involved with the funeral planning? I would think that these sorts of things should be discussed with the family (even if the deceased had made their wishes known). At the very least, it seems that you could have had the ceremony and then left before the caulking gun was applied. I doubt that the details of the power screwdriver were discussed with your grandparents when they made their arrangements.
Jewish law requires that mourners do exactly that. It’s not intended to immediately comfort them, but to make them face the reality and finality of their loved one’s death, which is thought to ultimately help with the grieving process.
I agree with you. I thought the same thing at the last funeral I was at, for my friend Mark. It seems like we went to an awful lot of trouble, standing around and crying for hours, driving an hour in procession to the church, sitting through a full mass, then driving another hour to the gravesite to stand around for a few minutes, simply see the coffin next to a hole in the ground, then turn and walk away.
Dammit, I’ve come this far with the man, I want to see the job done! Or at least, started to be done. I don’t know that I’d want to wait for the bulldozers to finish, but lowering the coffin and throwing a few ceremonial wads of earth feels complete. I can walk away fufilled while the professionals do the rest.
Of course, *I’d *much prefer to be made into soup for the soup kitchen, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. So donation to transplants and research it is. I don’t much care what my friends and family do to make themselves feel better after that - whatever they need is fine.
Well if you’re not going to see a burial (or whatever) why bother going to the cemetery (thanks for the spelling help gigi!)? Just wave bye bye to the hearse.
I think the whole mausoleum concept at the cemetery my grandparents are at is a bad idea and the designer deserves haunting. I bet my grandparents chose it because of some irrational fear of being buried on my grandmother’s part.
It doesn’t really serve the need for a cemetery service or for visiting. If I went to visit my grandparents grave (not likely anyway) I would have to crane my head to look up about 12-15 ft to see their names. Some of the marble slabs had flower holders affixed, but if I wanted to leave flowers I’d have to ask for a ladder. No benches either. Very weird.
Hopefully consumers just won’t be satisfied with what they see at funerals and more and more will choose end arrangements like WhyNot. I’m with him (her?). Fertilize the garden with me, dissect me, whatever’s cheap and easy. But if my survivors have the need for a horse drawn carriage and full burial that’s fine. I just would hate them to pay money to get that kind of “closure” and have a bizarre unsatisfying experience with astroturf lying around and loud power equipment.
I had a friend who was buried this weekend. Only the family went to the grave site after the church service, while the rest of us went to get liquored up at the local poncy private club until the family arrived from the cemetery.
The minister who officiated at the grave site told me two things that were just wrong about the way the cemetery managed the burial.
They no longer lower the casket into the ground while the mourners are present. This is done, supposedly, to spare the mourners the finality of the person’s death. Well, that’s just stupid. People need closure.
The cemetery gave the officiating priest a handful of sand to throw on top of the casket. She said ‘Nuts to that’ and used her bare hands to dig up some genuine New Jersey dirt to put on top of the casket.
When my dad died my mom and my sister and I requested to stay until the casket was lowered into the ground. The cemetary had no problem with this.
We were told by the funeral director that unless the family requests it, the cemetary would just rather wait until everyone leaves to lower the casket for fear of “incidents” (i.e. someone trying to jump into the grave).
My aunt died this summer. At her funeral in Ohio, the coffin was lowered into the grave, as we stood there. Most of the funerals I’ve been to in the last 10 years were this way.
There is a low frame set up around the grave, with a pair of straps crossing over the opening. The coffin is carried in and set on those straps, over the hole. Once the ceremony is over, the straps are used to lower the coffin into the ground. Dirt and/or flowers can be tossed on the coffin. The grave is not filled while the mourners are still there.
I work at a large cemetary, and the option to witness the lowering or not is at the descretion of the next of kin. I work in the mortuary, so I don’t get to many graveside services, but I think most people opt not to witness.
FWIW, the last funeral I went to for someone I know (a man from Belize), all the mourners witnessed the lowering, filed past the grave and threw in a handful of dirt, and left only after the bulldozer started filling the rest of it in.
Families I deal with are often surprised at the number of options they have in planning a loved one’s funeral. Many just assume that there are hard and fast rules about how funerals are done, when really they are the ones calling most of the shots.
I was very aggravated with the way the cemetery handled my grandfather’s funeral. He had the same sort of mausoleum thing, which I don’t understand, and which he had prepaid years before - I’m sure he wouldn’t have done it that way if he’d realized the implications. When we tried to select a plain pine casket for him in accordance with Jewish law, we were told that Florida law prohibited it and we had to get a stainless steel one. As the funeral director explained to us (when he wasn’t quasi-hitting on my mom, with me in the room mind you), this was because the masoleum slot is above ground, and as he tactfully put it, for public health reasons they needed to prevent “odor and leakage.”
Also, the cemetery staff annoyed the crap out of me for quite the opposite reason; first, they started whacking the front stone plate onto the mausoleum slot while we were all still standing there, to the point that we literally couldn’t hear each other. It was very disruptive. I understand they need to do it, but sheesh, it was over 100 degrees out there, and we certainly weren’t going to stay long - couldn’t they have waited another 10 minutes? Then they basically marked the spot by sticking his name in something resembling Scotch tape on the front of the mausoleum slot, but what really annoyed me for some reason is that they did it crooked.* Is it really so difficult to make an attempt to have some respect for the dead and take a few seconds to put it on straight?
(And let’s not even get into how the wrong funeral home picked up his body from the hospital morgue, without knowledge or permission of anyone in the family, and then called my grieving grandmother to tell her she had to come RIGHT NOW to drop off his clothes and tallis so they could prepare him for burial. She had no idea what was going on around her at that point, and they really upset her. We managed to distract her long enough to straighten it out; hopefully she still isn’t stuck with the mental picture of her dead husband of 66 years being driven randomly around town, naked, in a body bag in 100+ degree heat because they had put down a $100 deposit 10 years before and forgoten about it.)
Sigh. The only reason I can think of for the Astroturf is that women’s pointy-heeled shoes are less likely to sink into it than into freshly dug dirt.
There was a “green” funeral on the last episode of the HBO series “Six Feet Under” that looked appealing. As I remember, the hole was already dug. But the family lowered the body (which was only in a canvas wrap; no coffin) into the hole themselves and filled it by hand with shovels. And I think in some cultures the family washes the body themselves.