Digging Up The Past (Humans, that is...)

Let bygones br bygones. That's the standing motto when it comes to cemetery plots. Most folks believe that they should let sleeping dogs lie and not disturb the final resting places of our human predecesors. For the most part, I agree. But I do find it intriguing when a disinterment is scheduled to take place.

A lot goes into digging up a body. Permits must be secured, tractors have to be started up, laborers have to be given shovels, and morticians like me have to be present to oversee it all.

There are many reasons to dig up a dead person. Court cases and evidence collection readily comes to mind because those are the things you see on television a lot. There's probably a main character on the tube right now saying something like, "Dig 'em up. We need that semen sample."

Evidence collection isn't the only reason bodies are disinterred. Graves are excavated purposefully so that bodies can be relocated to a different plot, cemetery, city, or even state. Many families like to have their dead loved ones nearby, so if they move, the corpses must move too. I was involved in a disinterrment like this once. The family was moving 2,400 miles away and wanted to take Grandma with them. So, they contacted us at the funeral home and we contacted the cemetery. Luckily, the casket was a metal one, so it was still mostly intact after 52 years. The bottom had only rotted out partway. Grandma had been embalmed. Embalming drastically slows down the decomposition process, but it still takes place. When we dug her up, she was still soaking in her own fluids and the stench was almost unbearable. Once the chains were secured around her casket and she was pulled out of the hole in the ground, grandma was immediately placed in a plastic container called a grave liner. We closed that liner as soon as possible to save ourselves from the smell of decay. But we had a problem... the sprinkler system was on all night on the cemetery lawns. That meant that there was more fluid in the casket than anticiapted. Since grave liners don't seal completely, those extraneous fluids started leaking from the corners :(

We called the family and they quickly arrived with a tow trailer. We lifted the grave liner, casket, and Grandma onto the trailer and covered it all up with a tacky blue tarp. You couldn't tell what it was, but if you caught a whiff of the fluid still leaking from the casket, you'd have a pretty good idea that it was something dead. The family then hightailed it out of town and towed their dripping Grandma behind them the whole way. Kind of gross, huh?

You should know that grave relocation doesn't always happen on such a small scale. There are times when entire cemeteries must be moved because they are in the way of a city's growth or they pose serious health concerns (water suppy contamination and the spread of diseases to name a couple). When this happens intentionally, huge efforts are made to dig up the bodies as quickly and reverently as possible. Oftentimes, this happens in Europe, especially at old churches. You see, in the old days, everyone wanted to be buried on the church grounds because they were considered to be holier and you'd have a better chance of getting into Heaven. Well, the cemeteries soon filled up, so they just kept adding more and more dirt to bury layers and layers of casketed bodies. The graveyards ended up growing to extraordinary heights, but that wasn't the main problem. Back then, the 6-sided coffins were lined with lead, and although lead lined coffins are excellent for preserving the dead, they are obviously harmful to the environment of the living.

Sometimes mass disinterment takes place unexpectedly! That when organizations like DMORT are called out to handle the problem. An example includes areas with high water tables or massive flooding. This can actually cause the caskets to rise to the surface, and you can even find photos of them floating down the street in a flood! The organization presiding over the mess just rounds them up as quickly as possible, tries to identify the individual remains, and respectfully moves them to higher ground.

Disinterrment doesn't always happen intentionally. Sometimes people stumble upon buried human remains. We did when my parents were putting in their house on the ranch. My Dad was operating the bulldozer when he unearthed a small skeleton. It turns out that it was the remains of a Native American from the prehistoric era. Since we lived in an area where that was common, we never reported it. We just reburied the skull and other bones we found. I ended up finding more ancient bones when I put in my garden years later.

Whether it's intentional or not, it is always somewhat creepy and makes me contemplate death in a personal way. Will someone dig up my body years after I die? Not if I'm cremated!