February 7, 2013

Two days after my Dad passed I arranged with the funeral director to meet the grave digger where my Dad is to be buried. My Dad made plans to be buried in a family plot on property he once owned. When he sold the property he made provisions to have access to the cemetery for his own burial. He showed me exactly where he wanted to rest.

I drove up the road for a 3:30 appointment a little early. I planned on stopping dropping in on the property owner to inform her of my Dad's death and let her know our intentions of burying him. As I walked up to her door there was lots of noise, machinery off in the woods near the gravesite. She saw me approach through the window and opened the door. She was very nice and told me she expected this to happen and offered her condolences. I was very curious but it didn't occur to me what could possibly be the source of the noise.

I left the property owner and drove around to the other side of her property where there was a path to ingress the cemetery. There were people in the woods and two trucks in the pathway. I got out of the car and saw two men on the graves. One had a jackhammer and was standing directly on top of my Aunt Evelyn's grave. His jack hammer was blaring away in shrieking harmony with a generator nearby. Downward plunging, a violation of what I knew to be sacred. The other grave digger was on top of my great grandfather with a hand ogger screwing it into the ground. It was a very disturbing site (no pun intended).

They saw me and paused. One came forward and stretched his legs over the steel piped perimeter. He said they didn't know where to put my father and were looking to see where the others were buried. I was shocked that they were so intrusive, especially since my fathers intentions were to be buried outside the cemetery. They explained that they had come buy earlier in the year when we made arrangements for my Dad's funeral at the direction of the funeral director to look at the site. At that time an abutter told them they could not expand the graveyard. He added that it would be ok if they stayed within perimeter.

I wasted no time in calling the abutter who said he didn't say that. He told me he talked to these people 5 years ago with my Dad. He told them there was no issue as long as we were on the right side of the property lines.

I keep recalling the scene, two men upon the graves of my aunt and great grandfather, violating the sacred sanction of being placed at rest.

This is my Dad in the cemetery standing on the spot where he will be laid to rest soon.