welcome to the neighborhood

[mysteryscribe]

Since these were shot on film, you have to suffer sorry 'bout that

 

[LaFoto]

Erm :scratch: ... I don't quite get it... they are cemetery photos, but yet someone put that garden tent up there?
The living did?
Or did the ones on the darkside need some shade?

Questions and more questions :scratch:
Going well with the photo author's name: "Mysteryscribe".

 

[mysteryscribe]

around here they put up a tent over an open grave. It stays there after the funeral until they come back to take it down. It usually is up a couple less than a week. It always means a new resident has come to the cemetary.

 

[LaFoto]

Ah! :idea:
Now THAT explains it!
We don't have that here, that is why I didn't understand.

 

[mysteryscribe]

Actually Im glad you commented I had never thought about how elaborate our burial ceremony is.

1. first they come out with a backhoe and dig the grave... gone are the days when the sons dug it.

2. then they erect the tent. The funeral home does that.

3. then out comes the vault company. You have to have a vault to be burried here. They can be concrete or stainless steel. the stainless is sealed like a cigar tube. The concrete isnt and weighs like a ton. Everything decomposes in a concrete vault eventually but not a stainless one. But if it rains the stainless can push it's way through the ground because they will float. Like a beachball you know.

4. After the vault is in the bottom of the hole, the funeral home erects a device to sit the coffin on. A coffin is very heavy in its own rights. the device also will lower it into the vault I think after everyone is gone.

5. the funeral home covers the dirt from the grave with astro turf and then they set up chairs for the family. Cant have them passing out in grief or sun stroke.

6. They have the chapel service, then a second one at the grave site. After which everyone leaves. then they lower the coffin into the grave and inside the open vault.

7. After the coffin is in the grave and vault, they call the vault company who sends a man with the lid. His job is to seal the vault.

8. Someone comes along and fills the grave and takes the astro turf away. The flowers are placed on the grave but the tent is not taken down. Family will often return to the grave site that afternoon or the next day to view the grave for some reason.

9. then a few days later the tent is moved to the next place where someone has joined the brotherhood of the dead.

I think that pretty much covers how it is done. Is that more than you ever wanted to know about being buried or what. Based on research I did for a novel.

 

[LaFoto]

No, for me it is not too much information, it is actually quite interesting information. Several things are the same here, and some are not, such as the vault thing. The coffin here comes into the earth, just the earth, where it WILL eventually ... disappear ... after many years.

And there is no tent.
And no chairs.
If someone passes out in grief then ... well...

And the coffin is lowered into the ground as part of the ceremony on the side of the grave. Everyone witnesses that moment.

And there is a little mount of sand next to the open grave and people usually throw in a little shovel full of sand.

Though when my son was buried, I wished that mount not to be there so NO ONE could toss sand onto him and thus make all that awful thudding noise. I only wanted a little mount of flowers instead, so everyone could pick a flower and let that fall onto the lowered coffin ...

Sorry, I am rambling and getting carried away a bit...

We are not talking about your PHOTOS here at all, their quality and all that ... don't you miss that? Hadn't you wanted other members to much rather talk about the PHOTOS?

 

[mysteryscribe]

Actually I do a little writing so I don't mind the comment on things in general it helps me to learn. I just learned something from you I can use one day.

And I've been at photography as a livelyhood since I was twenty two and im over sixty now so I have heard good and bad about everything I've done.