Grave disturbance issue

TheChizler

Not quite sure where to ask this so feel free to move.

Today I was with my girlfriend and her cousin while they were visiting their cousin/brother's grave. He died last year and was cremated and buried in a small casket at the top of a grave with three people in it already. There's an empty plot adjacent to this, owned by the family.

Last week another relation was buried in the cousin's grave. My girlfriend was present for the funeral so she knew that the grave had been opened and that his casket must have been moved to let the new one go under it. The cousin saw this today and was shocked as the family had placed his casket themselves and so seeing it had been moved was pretty upsetting for her. What was worse was that the earth had collapsed at the top and it was clear that her brother's casket wasn't there any more. While we were consoling her and saying it had probably just sunk into the fresh earth after being temporarily removed, I noticed a good bit of debris in the soil, including pieces of old planters and glass. On closer inspection, in the sunken part of the grave, I was pretty shocked to come across pieces of cloth and what were clearly pieces of a coffin. They were slats of separating MDF complete with decorative moulding and coffin screws. We were all pretty horrified and kind of attempted to brush it off, thinking this must happen all the time with the mechanical diggers used. So we cleaned the grave up as much as we could and left.

So only now am I thinking that this actually doesn't feel as normal as we had convinced ourselves it was. I understand bits of planters and glass getting in, and even cloth, but coming across what was clearly coffin just didn't seem right. They could even be from a general pile of earth they use to backfill graves, but still something has gone wrong somewhere. Thinking now again that seems more unlikely, why would they need extra earth when adding a coffin to the grave? So the pieces must be from the underlying coffin in that grave. So now I'm putting a face to the person who's coffin it must have been and it's freaking me out a bit.

So basically I'm wondering what people's experience with this is, is it normal for gravediggers to disturb coffins? Is it acceptable? I (weirdly enough) have a friend who was a gravedigger for a while and the way he went on about it, it seemed to happen all the time, but I don't know if he was messing or not. I accept the grave collapsing as they were probably waiting for this to happen before tidying it up finally. Apologies for the rant and typing my thought process.

AhInFairness

I would suggest the relatives contact whichever agency is in charge of the graveyard and tell them about the grave.

They will be best placed to deal with it.

TheChizler

AhInFairness wrote: »

I would suggest the relatives contact whichever agency is in charge of the graveyard and tell them about the grave.

They will be best placed to deal with it.

If by agency you mean Cork City Council then I won't hold my breath... The family member with the deed has been notified now anyway so they'll take it up if they feel it's an issue I suppose. Has anyone ever experienced anything like this before?

somefeen

Sometimes coffins rot and collapse in on themselves, meaning the soil above takes up the space left so the grave collapses. I don't want to upset you but it is common enough as far as I know anyway. It doesn't sound like a grave robbery to me if that's what your worried about.

TheChizler

somefeen wrote: »

Sometimes coffins rot and collapse in on themselves, meaning the soil above takes up the space left so the grave collapses. I don't want to upset you but it is common enough as far as I know anyway. It doesn't sound like a grave robbery to me if that's what your worried about.

Oh no not worried about anything like that! The main thing I have issue with is finding bits of coffin on top of the grave!

ash23

I know that a few years after my grandfather died, I went to visit the grave and the coffin had clearly sank in on itself (large dip where his coffin was). It was really upsetting to think about it but the family got the topsoil levelled.

More recently when my gran passed, we were arranging the funeral and discussing who would dig the grave. My brother and some male cousins offered but the priest recommended that it shouldn't be family as "you never know what you will come across when you dig a grave". So we paid a group of guys who regularly dig graves.

Now, whoever did the work on the grave you are talking about should have been more careful when filling in the grave, to ensure that the visible soil was clear or any kind of debris. It was a shoddy job