There's a large funeral taking place in one of our rural churches this afternoon, of which I am not the officiant. There has been flurry of phone calls this morning as the grave digger is refusing to dig the grave because as soon as he takes out a bucket-load of soil the space is filling with water, and the side walls are not stable.
Admittedly this is the one churchyard of ours that is surrounded by a medieval moat, but on this occasion that is not the cause of the problem. The ground is so sodden from the weeks of snow and then the recent couple of days of rain that the water-level has risen considerably. The roadside ditches round our lanes are full, and that is always a good indicator of the state of the fields.
So my advice to the officiant, in line with that already obtained from our Archdeacon, is that the funeral service can go ahead as planned, but that the burial will have to be delayed. This will undoubtedly cause some distress to the family and those relatives who have flown in from lands afar, but there is no choice. Nature will win, and we must wait on the water-table dropping back to its usual level before the final act can take place.
They didn't want a burial at sea then?
ReplyDeleteIt would have meant drilling holes in the coffin ....
ReplyDeleteWe had to close our old cemetery when the water table got too high. Interestingly the last burial was a yachtsman!
ReplyDeleteDropping anchor and taking indefinite shore leave?
ReplyDeleteIn many northern New England cemeteries you can still see 19th c holding vaults in which the winter's crop was stored, pending the Spring thaw. I believe that in New Orleans, with its shallow (or above ground) graves and high water table, the dead tend to premature resurrection in times of flood. Mimi is probably expert on this.
ReplyDeleteIn J Meade Falkner's novel "Moonfleet" the coffins in the church crypt float around and knock against each other. For me it was one of my favourite parts of the book.
ReplyDeleteAs for our delayed burial, an alternative spot has been suggested to the family, and they have agreed to postpone the decision for some weeks to see if the situation rectifies itself. Unless we get continual monsoons from now until then, it should.
I must be very wicked. I couldn't help laughing.
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