The funeral commitments I have had to enter into in my limited exposure to such, involved contracts made the Funeral Director, whereby he provided documents Deeding final resting place ground to those succeeding the deceased, "Deeding Guaranteed in Perpetuity". That would mean, the dead are assured of peace forever, no doubt about it! Two points come to mind decrying that "forever" claim. During War, burial places have been bombed, possibly inadvertantly, but bombed nonetheless, resulting in redistribution of poor folks' remains in violation of "perpetual peace". West of Chicago, adjacent to my own family's burial place, Woodlawn Cemetery, lies a large strictly Jewish burial place: Jewish Waldheim Cemetery. Jews are highly adamant about disturbing their dead. So, when the alignment of the proposed new Congress Street Expressway, a part of the Interstate Highway System, happened to pass directly through Jewish Waldheim, a furor quickly arose between planners and the decedants of those dead buried there. Re-alignment costs as well as litigations involving Imminent Domain would have tied things up for perhaps years; the Federal monies for the project might likely go elsewhere, and Chicago contractors would lose a lot of revenue. Besides, re-alignment involved destruction of homes and businesses; the area was solidly filled in with them, except for.........the open grounds of Jewish Waldheim! Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley issued a brash statement: "Dig them up!" he ordered. And so it came to be, Congress Expressway displaced hundreds if not thousands of the deceased from their "perpetual" resting places, thus forever rendering those "forever contracts" delusional. Frank EDIT: "This cemetery does have a storied past and has been here since the beginning of the 20th century, according to some of the gravestones which date back 100 years. Among those buried there is movie producer Mike Todd, the third husband of Liz Taylor. She attended his funeral here when he died in a plane crash in 1958."
The only thing on the face of the earth that I can readily think of that is perpetual is found on the quantum level.....motion. All else, except death itself, can only carry limited warranties. Caveat Emptor.
You pay your money and you take your chances! There is a grocery store parking lot not far from where I live that used to be a cemetery, the dead were dug up and placed in a mass grave in another cemetery to accommodate the developer. We have another old cemetery that has been turned into a city park. As the tombstones have been vandalized over the years the city has buried them or removed them. Then we have all of the poor geeks all around the world whose eternal rest is disturbed by archaeologists. When does the crime of grave robbing cross the line and become the time-honored study of archaeology?
@Beatrice Taylor When it is done to graves of the formerly rich, famous, or of high social rank. That explains why some Pharaohs had elaborate but fake resting places built, to mask their true location after death. Frank
I’m not a very good archaeologist or at least, I wasn’t when I was a kid. We took a school trip when I lived in S. Florida to a place called Anderson’s Digs. Everyone had a small shovel and we were allowed to dig wherever. The place I chose to dig didn’t have fossils or bones but rather a case of 50cal rounds from WWII. Apparently they came from a cache in case of an attack on our Florida coast. No bones about it though, for it could be said that I did do a bang up job.