On Cemeteries...and PVC Pipes

So...this is one of them family stories...and while I'm sure my family may "suggest edits" this is how I remember it...

Raymond Resweber was my mom's uncle (by marriage). I'm not clear what that is to me and how many times twice removed or whatever, but we always called him "Uncle Raymond". A good man. Gruff and irritable at times, but now that I'm at my age I totally get it.

Raymond lived a good life. He was responsible for the formation of the first volunteer fire department in Port Barre, LA in 1945 and was appointed Fire Chief of the second fire district in 1959, serving in that role for 18 years. He was on the Board of Directors for the town's second fire district and was the town's Civil Defense Director for 10 years, and then was later elected Mayor and then after that Alderman. Hell, he built his own boat cruiser from scratch and traveled the Bayous Teche and Courtableau in it.

Ask any of the good people of that town and they likely still know who he was.

Well, as Raymond was getting on in his years he began thinking of his perpetual destiny and soon realized how silly it was that we buy individual cemetary plots for each person. I mean, do we really need a 12 foot by 8 foot piece of land (or however big they are) for each entombed individual? In the end, "ashes to ashes and dust to dust" and we're done on this earthly plane...so why waste all that space?
I've thought the same thing many times as I passed by cemetaries but Raymond, a very down-to-Earth man, came up with a plan to address it. A brilliant one, if you ask me.

I should step aside here and explain how most "burials" are done in south Louisiana. I put that in quotes because it's not the expected "six feet down" kinda thing that you do everywhere else because most of south Louisiana is alluvial plains, generally swampy and subsiding (due to anthropogenic changes, details of which we won't get into here).

Most of south Louisiana is old floodplains of the Mississippi, Red, and Atchafalaya Rivers (floodplains which were quite extensive before the A.C.E. built Project Flood; see the history of the 1927 flood). Pretty much all of the area exists because of these rivers dropping sediment over many millenia of normal flooding and building up the Delta from scratch. I seem to recall a factoid that you could dig down thousands of feet in Cajun Country before you'd hit any kind of bedrock -- unverified. Anyway, you bury someone "six feet down" in this countryside and one good flood over this swampy soil could have you floating down the street in your wooden box, and all that that implies.

So instead they "bury" you above ground in a marble or granite bathtub, with a removable marble/granite cover. The casket is placed in this above-ground crypt and the large heavy granite/marble cover slid across on it. Some families will build a family mausoleum - a small building of granite, basically - with shelves to the left and right where the caskets are stacked up like bunk beds.

Check out photos of cemetaries in Louisiana and you'll see what I mean.

OK, so back to Raymond Resweber. Raymond looks at this situation and thinks "why do we have individual plats" and comes with what I think is an ingenious solution: buy one "family plat" with one "family bathtub" and instead of putting in there a single casket - and having to buy more plats for other family members - Raymond decides that he will put within that family plat a series a PVC pipes buried vertically in the ground with screw-on caps. Any time someone dies, they get cremated and the funeral home will take those cremains, slide the crypt cover aside, screw open the next available PVC pipe, pour the cremains in there, then screw the PVC cover back on and slide the crypt cover back in place.

And why PVC? Well, as one family member put it:

"Ashes to ashes dust to dust, we use PVC 'cause it don't rust!" - MattW

When I heard about this I realized that Raymond and I were sympatico. I admired the man when he was alive, and hearing this only cemented my respect for him after death. We should have drank together.

Raymond was the first one placed in this family crypt, cremated and interred there in 1996. Raymond's wife, Moncie, passed away in 2000 and family lore is that she requested to be poured into the same pipe as Raymond because she wanted to finally be on top (...or so I'm told. I suspect my family may cringe over that point but hey that's what I was told...by them...and it certainly seems plausible...)

Anyway, you may wonder "Well, how many pipes are in there?" and I can't answer that as I've not seen it. But knowing Raymond I'm sure he's got enough in there for not only his immediate family but likely pretty much anyone in the extended family that's interested, maybe even friends and their family. After all, you can easily imagine how many vertical PVC pipes you can fit into a 12 foot by 8 foot plot of land (or however big they are).

My mom recently passed away and was cremated, and my sisters are going on and on about granite memorials and burials and flower vases and all that and I'm all like...well, what about the family plat in Port Barre? PVC pipe in memorium, right? After all, her family came from Port Barre Louisiana...

Hey, "Ashes to ashes." Anyway...

I know my wife will want to be cremated and scattered with her parents off the shoreline of Milford CT; her mother was scattered there in the late 80's(?) and we scattered her father there in '97. And I'm solidly a citizen of Connecticut now, probably retiring here in our tight-knit community (of which, coincidentally, I'm a member of the local Fire District Commission), and I know I should be "buried" with the person I spent most of my life.

But in my heart I'm a product of Pecaniere/Port Barre, Louisiana, a certified direct descendent of the original settlers of Bayou Teche (led by my 6th-great grandfather Jacques Courtableau, for whom the bayou through town is named). If my wife were to divorce me - totally understandable - I'd probably go find me a trailer someplace near Port Barre and enjoy my remaining years feeling sorry for myself (totally understandable). And as a close kin of Raymond Resweber - both metaphorically and metaphysically - I totally "get" his idea of the PVC pipes in the family crypt in Port Barre. I want in.

However, I can't imagine convincing my wife to have her cremains interred in Port Barre, Louisiana. It's totally outside her character.

But that's really where I should be. Heck, I'd even let her be on top...

Or maybe I'll create our own little PVC plat in our local community's cemetary? You know, carry on that Resweber small-town tradition in Connecticut.

Watch this space. - GA