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(back to page 6)
It takes the better part of a day to bury someone in the accustomed way: The site is prepared so that the "opening" of the grave, which is how the funeral industry euphemistically refers to grave digging, typically occurs on the morning of the funeral. "Closing" refers to the burial. Opening and closing: It sounds a bit like buying a home. As I think about it, buying and burying are only one letter apart, and I suppose that buying a grave plot is purchasing a home, in a sense--the final real-estate transaction.
If the weather predictions are good, or something else has come up in their personal lives, Jerry and Terry dig the grave the day before the funeral, as is the case today. It means they will need to make another trip down here tomorrow. Weekend funerals are more expensive, these days, but that is what the Patton family wanted.
I told Jerry and Terry I wanted to charge a fee of thirty dollars for driving to the cemetery, locating, and then flagging, the gravesite--something I do in all kinds of weather and sometimes at very short notice. They looked blank. Then I assured them that I would use the fee for cemetery maintenance.
Earlier on the telephone when I informed the man at the funeral home that from now on we would be charging a location or marking fee, I could hear him sneering. He said coldly, "Commercial cemeteries charge for marking graves, of course, but I thought you were not-for-profit." Then, he tried to shame me further, saying he would "let the family know that your cemetery has decided to charge a fee in addition to all their other funeral costs." He suggested I should bill the family directly.
I asked the brothers if they thought thirty dollars was unreasonable? After all, I must mark the grave so they can find it. After consulting my records, I drive up to the cemetery and, regardless of the weather, take care of the job.
I also told them the cemetery had recently doubled the price of individual plots from one hundred dollars each to two hundred dollars.
Terry considered his answer for a moment. "Instead of nickel-and-diming folks," he said, "why not raise your plot price to four hundred dollars?"
He added that small- to mid-sized commercial cemeteries in nearby towns charge from six hundred dollars to eight hundred dollars per plot. "And the bigger ones," he named a largish cemetery in the city south of here, "charge closer to one thousand dollars or fourteen hundred dollars if they are perpetual care, endowed cemeteries."
(This text ends on page 25 of the hardcover book.)
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