Despite being really busy, I just gotta blog about this!
So, someone Mr. B knows MIL (that is Mother-In-Law) died last Friday. She was 78, ill with cancer, and not in good shape at all (obviously).
She was well known in the community; we went to her viewing and there were lines of folks waiting to "see" her. Yeah, open casket (amazing what those funeral directors can do; we heard she hadn't been looking too "good" when she passed).
Anyway, Mr. B told me that she was going to be buried the following day (in a family plot that already contained her husband and his parents). Earlier in THAT day (Monday), her daughter received a phone call from the cemetery with a problem.
When they went to dig mom's grave, they found someone else already there. The other three coffins were there, too. So, who's buried in her spot?
The thing is, the cemetery had absolutely no idea. They did not have any record of anyone else being buried there. So, it's a mystery dead person.
What I found really bizarre is, rather than just move out the hitch hiking body, they required the daughter to sign papers authorizing the cemetery to move her father and grandparents (and the headstone) to ANOTHER location in the cemetery!
Turns out that they are not able to exhume (to find out who this party crasher is) the body OR move the coffin without either a signed agreement from next of kin (difficult as they have no idea in hell who this person is) OR a court order, which, obviously, would take longer than they had.
So, this opens up all sorts of questions and concerns. I mean, HOW could someone be buried there and a) no one knows who it is and b) WHY were they buried in the wrong place in the first place? Is it someone that has a tombstone nearby and the grave digger had an awful sense of direction? Didn't the mystery body have anyone attend its funeral and say, "Hey, wait, this isn't where they are supposed to go!"
Well, anyway; not something the daughter really needed to be dealing with in her time of grief, but, I suppose, it'll make for an entertaining story when enough time has passed.
Mrs. B
4 comments:
that is weird. someone needs to look into the record keeping for that cemetery!!! someone screwed up. and it wasn't the folks that died!
You got that right!
The whole situation is just unreal. I can't imagine what it must have felt like to get a call like that right after your mother died and you're trying to take care of the arrangements.
I'd probably just scream at them that they had better damn well fix it and fast!!!
You could write a novel about this! Did someone get murdered & slipped, surreptitiously, into MIL's spot?
Here's a cemetery story: My great aunt Nell Aurora Porter, 12 yrs after burying her first husband (dead of TB), married Charles Edward Waite in 1910. Great Uncle Ed's first wife had died in childbirth... with baby. As they were both being poured into Mount Pleasant Cemetery (St. Jay, VT), Ed, in hysterics, jumped into the grave with them.
Ed was hauled out, recovered, married... less than a year later... Nellie Aurora. They had about 45 pretty good years together.
Ed is buried in St Johnsbury w/his siblings, parents, first wife & baby.
Nell is buried in West Burke, VT w/husband #1 (who died at 27), their baby who died at birth, his parents, her parents, her siblings, spouses & their children.
Nell got past the tuff times. loved all her nieces & nephews, had fun with her church & organization activities, kept 2nd husband Ed in line.
We all gotta move on, yes?
That's why I'll be cremated and spread over a desert vista! No one will be in my grave, but someone might walk on me on the trail!
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