Walking among numerous cemetery burials this spring, I was confronted with the hard reality of the interment process: a hole is dug, a service is performed, the casket is lowered into a vault that is covered with soil; grass seed may be planted, and a marker placed.
For those graves with markers not already in place, the process now in Upstate NY can take up to 6 months before a loved one is properly settled. Cemeteries without generous maintenance funds seem to have bare plots for several years before the encroaching grass finally covers the grave. For those in congested areas such as NYC, the process can be even more complex and protracted. Certainly in the past, epidemics spawned mass burials without sympathy and ceremony.
Cemetery workers are compassionate people. They do their best for the family. A grave is a sacred place to be treated with reverence and respect, but machines necessarily intrude upon the space and sometimes disturb surrounding graves. Concrete vaults in the earth may seem cold and harsh.
Flowers and mementos attempt to soften the blow of placing a body in the earth, no longer to smile and laugh, no longer to be touched and hugged. But the old adage, ashes to ashes, and dust to dust, still applies. Our bodies come to this earth, and our bodies return to the earth. We are left behind to mourn.
