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!
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.
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?
>>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.
TIL: Coffin: six sided. Casket: four sided.
Relieved this wasn’t another Medium think-piece on SBF
It seems someone is feeling rather pessimistic about the tech job market...
Why do cemeteries have fences?
Because people are dying to get in!
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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.