Gravedigging 101

https://burialsandbeyond.com/2018/05/02/gravedigging-101/

by joko42 • 4 years ago

79 49 4 years ago

burialsandbeyond.com

ShuffleBoard• 4 years ago

It seems someone is feeling rather pessimistic about the tech job market...

Turing_Machine• 4 years ago

Could lead to something bigger. Joe Strummer from The Clash was a gravedigger at one time.

jollyllama• 4 years ago

Though he never loved the shovel.

Tade0• 4 years ago

My college friend worked part time as an undertaker - the pay was surprisingly good considering the options a sophomore year student had.

He had fond memories of the experience - flexible hours, physical activity outside and nobody bothering you for hours on end.

mypastself• 4 years ago

I guess you have to make “working on legacy code” sound more appealing somehow…

recuter• 4 years ago

My advice to you is to start drinking heavily.

rockwotj2• 4 years ago

Why do cemeteries have fences?

Because people are dying to get in!

gumby• 4 years ago

The people in my town can't be buried in any of its graveyards. Why? Because they aren't dead yet!

gadders3• 4 years ago

They're always in the dead centre of town as well #dadjokesfordays

KineticLensman3• 4 years ago

I was once walking through a graveyard and someone asked me if the path had a different exit to the one they had entered by. I replied, "No, it's a dead end"

FartyMcFarter• 4 years ago

A twin-seat Cessna plane crashed into a graveyard this afternoon.

Rescue workers, hard at work at the scene, have already recovered 158 bodies so far and expect that number to climb as digging continues into the night.

limbicsystem• 4 years ago

I'll just leave this here: https://youtu.be/_fb33PrnxtA

rockwotj2• 4 years ago

https://youtu.be/Jdf5EXo6I68

adwi• 4 years ago

Relieved this wasn’t another Medium think-piece on SBF

thraxil• 4 years ago

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 paperwork that us minimum wage schlubs couldn't be trusted to deal with. Where we were, the local regulations required that you couldn't just put a coffin into the ground, you had to put it in a concrete vault (probably something to do with the water table). So one of the companies that did that would show up with a truck and backhoe, cut out the sod, dig the hole loading most of the dirt into a truck but leaving a smallish pile there for the ceremony, lower the vault into place, set up the lowering mechanism, then clean up and clear out. After the ceremony, they'd come back, drop the vault lid into place, pack up the lowering mechanism, fill the dirt back in and replace the sod.

ranting-moth• 4 years ago

I friend of mine asked to borrow my hoe. After me saying '?' and '!', then he explained that, yes, in the UK you dig a hole with a hoe.

KineticLensman3• 4 years ago

in the UK you dig a hole with a hoe

(Pedantic Brit here) I think most Brits would say 'with a spade' if asked how to dig a hole and would use a hoe to break up soil, disrupt weeds, harvest roots, etc [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoe_(tool)

massysett• 4 years ago

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)

smeej2• 4 years ago

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 notwithstanding), so why not just start there and skip the grinding step?

tengwar24• 4 years ago

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 compact personal grave or vault (by vault, I mean an pre-constructed underground concrete boxes, which would usually be part of a row with plaques on top). An ossuary would generally be communal, so not a great place to visit for an individual family member. If it were private, it would be larger than the very small vault used for burying ashes, so more expensive. Hence leaving out the grinding step makes the remains harder to dispose of, and doesn't really have any advantage. Having said that, there are some cultures for which the bones must not be cremulated (ground).

smeej2• 4 years ago

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.

nemo1618• 4 years ago

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!

kwhinnery• 4 years ago

Two fun facts delivering strong ROI for my visit to HN today, much appreciated!

treesknees• 4 years ago

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.

mwint• 4 years ago

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?

mellavora2• 4 years ago

wonder what the homeowner association would have to say about that?

acheron• 4 years ago

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")

IncRnd• 4 years ago

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

gadders3• 4 years ago

>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 him.

poulsbohemian• 4 years ago

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.

kornhole2• 4 years ago

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.

ciupicri• 4 years ago

What about dental or breast implants? Or pacemakers?

kornhole2• 4 years ago

Some lucky person will get my gold fillings. Those are my only implants.

shagmin• 4 years ago

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

rpastuszak• 4 years ago

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

FeteCommuniste• 4 years ago

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.

aszen• 4 years ago

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

thyrsus• 4 years ago

TIL: Coffin: six sided. Casket: four sided.

Gravedigging 101

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