My dearest aunt, a second mother to me, passed away of pancreatic cancer on November 23 at the age of 94.
Yesterday, we took my dearest aunt's cremains to the cemetery for burial.
Several employees of that cemetery need to be shown the door. One employee in particular.
A hideous day at the cemetery!
We (my two cousins and I) arrived well before the appointed hour with the alabaster urn holding my aunt's cremains to bury.
Somehow, despite several conversations last week as to how we the family wanted to proceed at graveside (the family plot already holding the cousin I considered a brother, my grandmother after whom I was named, and my aunt's husband who had died suddenly at age 31), the incompetent cemetery representative thought that we were doing a "drop off."
A drop off! I can't believe that those words were actually spoken to us.
And, of course, the grave had not been opened!
The idiot at the cemetery actually considered not letting us bury my aunt yesterday!
We expressed our displeasure -- to say the least. The grave was opened about one hour later. By then, the rain started again -- after a break of nearly two hours.
If the cemetery had done what was supposed to be done, we'd have been able to bury my aunt's cremains without the misery of a cold, cold rain.
We stood at the graveside in the rain and said goodbye to my aunt.
Enough rain fell that the dirt (clay) from the opening of the grave turned into mud. As a result, there wasn't enough to fill in the grave completely. There wasn't even enough mud to cover the vault containing the urn.
Horrible.
My cousins, who had done the driving to the cemetery, and I rode home in silence. We did manage to stop at a restaurant for a bite to eat, but our conversation wasn't uplifting after all we'd been through at that cemetery.
Once I got home, I fell into bed and slept the rest of the day.
I'll never get what happened yesterday out of my mind.
In a few weeks, we'll have to return to the cemetery to see if the marker is in place and properly etched. My aunt chose and paid for that marker a few years ago so that when her inevitable death came the family would have an easier time with her final arrangements. We the family have no faith in the cemetery doing that marker properly either.
5 comments:
AOW, I am so sorry. What sort of people allow that to happen to a grieving family? That employee needs to be dismissed before s/he can do that to anyone else. My brother is a retired undertaker and would have immediately called for the firing of anyone so incompetent and callous. The personnel at that cemetery have taken damaged something precious to you that can never be replaced.
I am fortunate in that my dad is buried in the military cemetery at Otis AFB on Cape Cod, and that is where my mom will be some day. They take exquisite care with their ceremonies and treatment of families.
All families deserve to have those connected with buriel of their loved ones act with competence and dignity, or go find another line of work.
RRA,
I'm still beaten down by what happened yesterday.
My defeat will pass.
I'm sure that my cousin and I will be filing a formal complaint against the cemetery.
Nobody else from my family will be buried there. We're done at that place!
In fact, we'd have walked away yesterday except that my aunt wanted to be buried with her husband and her only son.
I'm sure that Saturday's memorial service will be fine. We're going to a different place for that service.
I didn't even go into the foul ups of last Friday: trip required to the cemetery because the cemetery wouldn't take a credit card over the phone (credit card from my cousin OR from the funeral home), error in the bill which was paid by check in person, another trip requested (which we refused) later that same day, and on and on. I can't go into all of it right now.
We did everything to make sure that yesterday would go off without a glitch. Well, THAT didn't happen. **sigh**
It's not a defeat, AOW. It is shabby treatment by morons who have never suffered such a loss.
I'm sorry for your loss.
That is horrifying. You'd think they could have protected the grave with an awning or some sort of covering so it wouldn't be soaked by the rain.
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