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Gravedigging 101

burialsandbeyond.com

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Re: Gravedigging 101

#41

Post by acheron »

nemo1618 wrote: post #15

I recently learned that home burials are legal in most U.S. states. Gravedigging is hard work, but I think burying a loved one on their own property (with the help of some friends/family) is a nice alternative to a cemetery/graveyard. Also, here's a free pet peeve: it's only a graveyard if it's next to a church. You're welcome!

it's only a graveyard if it's next to a church.

Not true. You can have cemeteries with a church or graveyards not. There's a connotation of "graveyards" as older than cemeteries, and most older ones were near churches, but it's never been a strict definition.

While we're on it though, "graveyard" is a recentish word ("grave" and "yard" are both old Germanic words but the compound word only comes from the 1700s). The Old English word was "licburg", meaning "corpse town". ("lic" is the source of the D&D/fantasy game "lich")

Re: Gravedigging 101

#42

Post by mwint »

treesknees wrote: post #33
nemo1618 wrote: post #15

I recently learned that home burials are legal in most U.S. states. Gravedigging is hard work, but I think burying a loved one on their own property (with the help of some friends/family) is a nice alternative to a cemetery/graveyard. Also, here's a free pet peeve: it's only a graveyard if it's next to a church. You're welcome!

Depending on how much spare land there is, and who will inherit that property. I couldn't imagine sticking grandma in a grave on the corner of a subdivision, or having any serious offers come in once potential buyers see a headstone in the back yard.

If you buy a property with a grave on it (knowingly or not), I wonder if there’s any way to legally move it to a proper cemetery?

Re: Gravedigging 101

#43

Post by poulsbohemian »

gadders wrote: post #30

>>In terms of practicality, before the coffin enters the ground the amount of earth leaving and returning to the hole must be considered – if none was removed from the pile of earth, there will be a large mound left once the grave is filled in. If too much is taken, you’ve got a trough-shaped problem on your hands. I made this mistake burying the cat in the back garden. There is now a dent in the lawn where I buried…

> I made this mistake burying the cat in the back garden. There is now a dent in the lawn where I buried him.

General speaking, you can add top soil loosely over the grass until the ground is level, and the grass will grow through it. This is assuming a depression of only a few inches of course - will be harder to accomplish if it’s more than that. That said - I once tried to smother some lillies by added several feet of dirt on top of them - they grew through anyway.

Re: Gravedigging 101

#44

Post by rpastuszak »

shagmin wrote: post #37
kornhole wrote: post #34

I have never understood why people make so much work and waste around dead carcasses. When it is time for me to die and I am able, I want to get myself onto one of the hills around here. I want the condors, coyotes, and other creatures to have a good meal. Threatened animals are fed and my family has zero bills to pay. I know it is illegal, but go ahead and arrest my dead body.

Also known as a sky burial in parts of central Asia.

Don’t forget about the towers of silence in Zoroastrianism.

Re: Gravedigging 101

#45

Post by IncRnd »

nemo1618 wrote: post #15

I recently learned that home burials are legal in most U.S. states. Gravedigging is hard work, but I think burying a loved one on their own property (with the help of some friends/family) is a nice alternative to a cemetery/graveyard. Also, here's a free pet peeve: it's only a graveyard if it's next to a church. You're welcome!

> Also, here's a free pet peeve: it's only a graveyard if it's next to a church. You're welcome!

That's not correct. A graveyard primarily means a cemetary next to a church, but this is not exclusive. A graveyard can be elsewhere and not next to a church. Any dictionary will show this, websters[1], oxford learners online[2], dictionary.com[3]. Even wikipedia's entry for graveyard shows this. [4]

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/graveyard

[2] https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/us/definition/eng...

[3] https://www.dictionary.com/browse/graveyard

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cemetery

Re: Gravedigging 101

#46

Post by FeteCommuniste »

kornhole wrote: post #34

I have never understood why people make so much work and waste around dead carcasses. When it is time for me to die and I am able, I want to get myself onto one of the hills around here. I want the condors, coyotes, and other creatures to have a good meal. Threatened animals are fed and my family has zero bills to pay. I know it is illegal, but go ahead and arrest my dead body.

Put me in a hole in the ground but skip the coffin. Worms need to eat, too! And that way no one will stumble across my decaying corpse.

Re: Gravedigging 101

#47

Post by smeej »

tengwar2 wrote: post #18
smeej wrote: post #11

Maybe not the place for this question, but I've been wondering about it recently: From what I think I understand, cremation usually leaves the bones, which are then ground to produce the "ash" that goes into the urn. Why not just bury the bones in an ossuary? It would be much smaller than a typical grave, and that's what ends up in the vast majority of coffins eventually anyway (certain "incorruptible" bodies notwith…

I'm a funeral officiant in the UK, inter alia. The traditional purpose of an ossuary is to save the skull and two femurs, which were thought to be the desirable minimum for the archangel Michael to work the resurrection on the day of judgement (hence the symbolism of the skull and crossbones). Most cultures don't have a need to do that for religious reasons, and either want to scatter ashes, or bury them in a very co…

It sounds like the history I'd thought I'd heard, and maybe even the terminology, for what I was trying to describe were way off.

"Ossuary" sounded like the right word for "bone box," but the context in which I'd heard the idea was an old Jewish custom of reusing tombs. You'd put somebody in there, wait for a couple years until they were just bones, gather the bones in a box (which was what I thought was called an ossuary), and then over time store lots and lots of family members' bones in their separate boxes in one tomb. It made a lot more sense to me than burying each body in its own body-sized casket forever.

I'd heard of early Catholic opposition to cremation and cremulation, but also that some cultures did it to mock the belief in resurrection, sort of a, "Let's see anybody resurrect this!" sentiment. I'm not sure about St. Michael, though. He's not traditionally believed to be directly involved in the raising of the dead.

Re: Gravedigging 101

#48

Post by aszen »

FeteCommuniste wrote: post #46
kornhole wrote: post #34

I have never understood why people make so much work and waste around dead carcasses. When it is time for me to die and I am able, I want to get myself onto one of the hills around here. I want the condors, coyotes, and other creatures to have a good meal. Threatened animals are fed and my family has zero bills to pay. I know it is illegal, but go ahead and arrest my dead body.

Put me in a hole in the ground but skip the coffin. Worms need to eat, too! And that way no one will stumble across my decaying corpse.

That is how most muslims are buried, no coffin just a simple cloth

Re: Gravedigging 101

#49

Post by massysett »

thraxil wrote: post #10

I worked on a groundskeeping team for a small cemetery (in the US) as a summer job when I was in high school. Mostly, it was mowing grass, trimming weeds, cleaning lichen off stones (we got to use the power washer for that, which was always exciting), etc. There were typically only a few burials per month. We didn't do the burying; that had to be subcontracted out because it required special equipment and a lot of pa…

The concrete vault helps prevent the gravesite from sinking. The coffin or casket will decompose, and there’s a lot piled on top of it, and people and equipment go over it, so with time it can cave in.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burial_vault_(enclosure)

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