How secure is a cemetery, really?

From a purely legal standpoint, I can appreciate (and share in) the outrage felt by people who have family members whom they laid to rest at Burr Oak Cemetery in southwest suburban Alsip.

Those families paid good money (and let’s be honest, in many cases it may have been money they really didn’t have to spare, but paid out anyway to provide for a dignified burial) for a cemetery plot, with the legal understanding that it was theirs.

THAT PLOT OF land would provide the final resting place, so to speak, for their deceased love one, and now they could quit worrying and get on with their lives.

So imagine how outraged they must be to learn that some workers at the cemetery were emptying out some grave sites so that the land could be resold to other people in need of a “final resting place” for their loved one.

That is just outrageous. It is a scam, and it is one that the courts and prosecutors will address in coming months, now that four people face criminal charges for their actions at the cemetery.

But that is purely a business issue. Somebody sold something to someone that they had already sold to someone else. Technically, it wasn’t theirs to sell.

THAT LEGALISTIC CONCEPT isn’t the reason so many people are finding this story morbidly intriguing.

It has to do with the way in which the bodies that were removed from their graves were then dealt with. Bones and other remains from about 100 different individuals were found piled up above ground in a portion of the cemetery that was fenced off from the public.

I suppose the cemetery officials would claim they were being somewhat dignified by putting the remains in a place where they weren’t exposed to the public. But why they didn’t think to create some sort of mass grave, instead of leaving the body parts out in the open air, is something I don’t understand.

Not that such a mass grave would be acceptable to anyone. After all, people paid money for those gravesites, only to find they were being resold.

NOW I KNOW this next statement is going to tick off some individuals. But I am having a hard time sharing some of the revulsion that people feel about this particular story (which was the dominant one on Chicago-area news reports and broadcasts on Thursday).

I suppose it has to do with the idea that I have always thought it incredibly unrealistic that a gravesite was somehow “safe” for all eternity.

With modern-day embalming techniques and other preservation methods, it is very possible to create human remains that won’t turn to soil once they are buried. Cemeteries literally provide limited spaces in which to bury people.

What does happen when space “runs out?”

TO ME, THE idea that a body was moved isn’t all that offensive, provided that people understand such an act can take place.

After all, take the concept of Lincoln Park. That so-called jewel on the north lakefront of Chicago that is the focal point of one of the city’s most elite neighborhoods was once the city’s cemetery.

But back in the 19th Century, officials saw the potential for development and didn’t let a little thing like human remains and eternal rest stand in their way.

Admittedly, that case differs in that those bodies were removed with permission of the surviving families, and there actually remain a few bodies buried in Lincoln Park in cases where people refused to allow the remains to be removed.

BUT NOW, CHICAGOANS with a sense of the quirky about our home city will cite that fact as an off-the-wall bit of trivia, rather than as some grotesque fact.

As far as the fact that bodies at Burr Oak were found dismembered, that is a different story (although I find it interesting that the criminal charge for such an act is classified as a Class X felony – the only thing worse is the crime of murder itself). We’re talking about cemetery workers who, if found guilty, have the potential to spend a couple of decades in a state prison.

Now I don’t know if I want to go as far as a friend of mine, who once argued that cemeteries were a waste of land and that all bodies ought to be cremated. I appreciate that some people have religious beliefs that demand a burial in order to be accommodated, and I’m not looking to pick a fight with them.

But while I’ll be the first to admit that the situation at Burr Oak is an extreme, is it really all that gruesome to have to accept the thought that perhaps a gravesite is just a temporary resting place, and that expecting that tiny plot of land to be yours for all eternity was probably about as realistic as believing that the WMAQ was ever gonna make you rich.

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