Bare gnarled trees lined the sloped dirt road. Flat spaces on the sometimes gentle, sometimes steep hills were marked out by low rectangles and squares of concrete. In those spaces were white marble markers. Gravestones from as early as 1844, possibly earlier. One grave was marked with a marble obelisk topped with a statue of Jesus.
The hearse preceded us up the hill; the only car allowed to travel into the cemetery. Carrying the casket 100 yards to the grave site would have been difficult. The hearse somehow made a turn so the back door opened facing up the hill. Everyone at the grave site had to walk.
We climbed the rise to the family plot and looked in the hole. It wasn't like other graves I'd seen, been a pallbearer to. It was a large gaping hole, torn out of the red earth rather raggedly. The dirt removed was piled next to the long side of the plot. The dirt was rocky and coarse. One section of the wall had collapsed leaving a scallop out of the mostly vertical side. The cemetery workers said there had been rain recently and that made the dirt heavy and unstable. The hole 6 feet or more wide, and it was also deep. About 8-9 feet deep. Because it was on a hill, and there was no machine to lower the casket into the hole, it would need to be done manually with wide straps. By the six pallbearers.
The mortuary men figured out how to get the casket in to the ground. Two 2" x 12" planks about 10-12 feet long were placed across, spanning the top and bottom of the concrete sides which were the borders of the burial plot. Because the boards had some flex, pieces of wood were placed on the family grave marker to shim it up. Would OSHA approve? Hell no. But it should be sturdy enough for the task at hand.
The morticians laid out 3 straps each about 20 feet long. They were rough and wide, like ratchet straps used for securing cargo to truck walls. The mortician told us to take off our dress coats. The best way to lower with straps was to have the excess strap length thrown over your shoulder. As you let it in, the strap would feed over your shoulder easily. Because where the plot was we had to set the casket at 90 degrees to the orientation of the hole. There was dirt on one side of the hole. At the bottom of the hole was a steep hill with scrub brush, going up from the hole was the continuation of the hill and another burial plot higher up the hill.
The top of the gold metallic casket needed to be at the top of the plot. I don't think it would matter to the occupant, but we were told what to do. We brought the heavy casket out of the hearse and set it on the straps. The ends were threaded thru the handles of the casket. I was at the head of the casket. I would have to balance on the low concrete curb surrounding the plot to lower the casket into the ground.
Now this was not all done in a vacuum. There were people from the church service who came to the grave side to watch. There was a group of 4-5 older women sitting on the cement curb of the plot up the hill watching. There were also people standing away from us as we were about to set to work. And what they were about to see was, at the same time, kind of sketchy but also pretty funny.
I have been a pallbearer 4-5 times. I was worried about dropping my friend's mom in San Diego on rolling dewy hills as we walked to the grave site off the 15 freeway. We were wearing white cotton gloves, which made gripping the casket handles difficult, and walking on sloped, wet grass. If we dropped it she would have slid down the hill and burst thru the chain link fence and joined the flow of traffic heading South.
This time was trickier. Behind me as I gripped the strap was a steep hill. We had to lift the weight, carry it forward, then make a 90 degree turn. Three people would have to navigate the boards and the 3 on my side would have to walk the cement beam. We started the turn. As we got the first 3 feet of the casket over the hole I couldn't get a good grip on the strap. The casket was not level. My end was lurching downward. Because it was a wide hole the straps were straining outward. I said I needed a hand. It was heavy and I was being pulled toward the hole. Howard jumped in to help and grabbed the handle end. Someone grabbed onto Howard and kept him from falling into the hole.
We slowly struggled forward, all of us precariously perched on a beam or board. As we got halfway over the hole the strain of my strap bent the handle it was threaded under. I was shocked. I said, "We need to go faster." I had no idea how the casket was constructed, but I imagined the handle breaking loose and the box dropping into the ground, pulled out of the other's hands by the sudden explosion of weight. We got it completely over the hole. I don't recall anyone saying lower away, but we started lowering it down. Howard also had hands on my side of the strap so it wasn't necessarily smooth, but it was safer.
I was relieved when the casket touched bottom. I looked at the guy across from me and let go of my end of the strap. He pulled it out from the handles.
Nice brief words were said at the graveside. We all joined in to sing amazing grace. Purple flowers were tossed on top of the casket. As we finished up and walked from the plot the main topic of conversation was, "Oh shit, I thought we were going to drop her." One of the morticians or cemetery workers said they had seen coffins get dropped into the grave. That's kind of horrifying, but with the locks on the caskets, nothing more shocking would happen.
The funny thing was, we all agreed Theresa would have gotten a laugh out of the spectacle. Not said at the time but she would comment later with observations about the entire operation.
Rest in Peace.
