From The Grave

I had a chance to tell this story today to a complete stranger, and it is one of my absolute favorites. 100% True, and I remember it like a movie.

I took a gap year after high school. My grades were an absolute six-car pileup (I blame the classic conundrum of lizard brain mixed with teenage hormones and an insatiable desire to be onstage, and other things as well) and my parents had very little in the way of middle class income. So I decided a gap year was my path.

Enter the world of two separate jobs that would make use of my hands and body, hence allowing me an opportunity to decide if manual labor was my destiny, or should I attempt college and pursue a cubicle-laden future. The first role was as an electrician apprentice. I was really a gopher, and not in an accredited program. But I learned a few things that still pop up from time to time. But the second job, well, it was a doozy.

I worked at a local cemetery, just a few miles outside of town on the north side. The area was farmland and gravel pits, mostly. I worked with a few guys that were a little common central Ohio stock: rural, traditional, hard working, direct. I didn’t get a long with all of them all the time, but for the most part, these guys were ok. Bert the foreman, Joe the guy from Jersey, and Buster, the guy from down the road that just loved having this job. I have no idea why, but now I see a sense of accomplishment and a meditation to the activity: cutting grass, helping with the rites of passage into eternal slumber, marking the timelines of many lives of different stature. Maybe that guy had it all figured out. He left mid season for some factory gig. Pity.

In the spring and early summer, the grass grows quickly. We sometimes cut grass twice a week. But in the dog days, the grass sometimes dies as well, and we mourn the green, but celebrate the lack of activity. When this happens, typically, Bert the foreman takes vacation.

Towards the end of summer, this had happened as it had happened years before (according to Joe), Joe and I were left to our own devices with dead, brown grass and a pristine cemetery.

Then on a week with some rains expected, we were directed to open a grave in the backside of the gardens, one of the older sections, for a funeral in two days.

To battle! Man the backhoe! Stake the ground and capture the earth!

Before we could get started the rains came. We let the rain fall with an expectation we would open the space the next morning. Rain fell most of the evening, some more during the night, and then a little more in the morning. We caught a break a little after lunchtime. We were itching to get it done, just to fill the time.

Joe ran the backhoe, I maintained a shovel on the opposite end of the grave, mostly just to watch as this part was easy. Once the bulk of the grave was dug, I had the jump in and make two mounds of earth to support a concrete vault that will protect the casket from the earth around it. IT gets sealed with a lid to make one entire container. You make two mounds to allow enough clearance under the vault when It is lowered that the straps can be removed.

Graves are typically excavated to a depth of approximately six feet, maybe more depending on how good your depth perception is from the backhoe. Once I created the mounds and squared off the sides, I half pulled/half clawed my 5’9” skinny frame out of the grave and helped Joe with the vault, lowering it into the hole.

When we pulled the top of the vault out, some dirt was dropped into the vault itself. It would be unprofessional to have that dirt in there, and the funeral director, cemetery salesperson, or family member may remark on it, so we needed to clean it out.

It has started to sprinkle when we started this endeavor, but we were under a canopy of trees, and didn’t really notice that it had gotten progressively harder. Joe told me he would get the backhoe back down to the shop at the bottom of the hill while I cleaned out the vault of dirt, and then we would cover it with plywood and finish early for the day.

Joe disappeared and I hopped down into the hole to quickly clean out the dirt. Mission accomplished, as I started pulling myself out, I kicked some more dirt into the vault, and returned for another cleaning. I had knocked a decent amount dirt loose, and needed to be careful getting out lest I have to make a third sweep.

While attempting to climb out of this hole, twice, I had covered the front of my uniform with fresh dirt, and was so focused on my own actions that I did not notice the two elderly women paying their respects to a grave just a few dozen feet away. Their backs to me, they probably never noticed the hole in the ground.

But here I am, covered in dirt, half in and half out, clawing my way into the wet grass and loose dirt, thinking ‘oh great. they’re going to turn around, and I am going to end up scaring these women to death! The dead have risen! And they work as gardeners in the afterlife!’

Joe rolled up just in time for us to clean up our tools, cover the hotel with plywood, and then disappear down the hill, laughing about what had just happened, discussing the hypothetical situation unfolding on a rainy afternoon in the cemetery.

That was 30 years ago this August.