It’s wise to know facts on perpetual care

When Melanie Brasseale buried her parents in Elmwood Cemetery in Birmingham, she did so with the hope their final resting place would be well cared for.
   
Little did she know she would visit the cemetery one day to find that her mother’s headstone had sunken, thus beginning a yearlong battle to correct the situation. While frustrating, Brasseale’s plight is not different from others who bury their loved ones only to find the area not properly maintained.
   
Donald Boomershine, president of the Central Alabama Better Business Bureau, said families should investigate how their loved ones will be cared for following burial. “That’s certainly a key factor, and you want to feel free and easy to visit the site,” Boomershine said. “And once you put flowers or whatever (at the grave), you’d like to feel certain that those flowers will be protected and your memorial will be protected from vandals and so forth. 
   
“You need to know the perpetual care of that — how much is it and for how (long)?” he added.
   
Brasseale said she didn’t visit the graves often. Her father passed away in 1972 and her mother died 22 years later. Following her mother’s death in 1993, Brasseale said several months passed before a marker was placed at her mother’s grave.
   
When the marker was placed, she realized immediately it wasn’t even with her father’s. Despite that, she said the marker was above ground.
   
“I wasn’t going to be upset about it not being even,” she said, “that’s not a big thing.”
But while the unevenness of the marker was something she could overlook, Brasseale said she wasn’t prepared for what she found upon visiting the gravesite in 1999. That’s when she found the marker had sunk into the ground.
   
“It was a sinkhole,” she said. Brasseale contacted the cemetery and was told the problem would be corrected.
   
“I thought, they said they’d take care of it and they would,” she said.
   
Six months passed before Brasseale returned to the cemetery, only to find the problem had not been corrected.
   
“It was worse, it had sunk even more,” she said. “I didn’t think I needed to call and follow up. I guess that was my mistake.”
   
Contacting the cemetery the following Monday, she was again told the problem would be corrected. Several days passed before Brasseale referred to a representative who eventually had the headstone leveled after more than a year.
   
Brasseale’s plight illustrates the importance of getting it on paper when it comes to making sure there is upkeep at gravesites and monuments. Boomershine said families should also make sure contracts address the issue of perpetual care to assure gravesites will be properly cared for.
   
Gregory Jeane, professor of geography at Samford University, said another consideration families have to take into account is the upkeep of graves in private and church cemeteries.
   
Jeane said his research shows many burials in the South in the past were done in church cemeteries or on private burial grounds.
   
“Often, when a cemetery is associated with a church, the cemetery precedes construction of the church,” he said.
   
Jeane said there are steps to protecting the final resting place of loved ones. While most churches maintain gravesites, care can be more involved at cemeteries not associated with funeral homes. “Often, so many of those cemeteries have been abandoned,” he said.Families should check the ownership of land in regard to upkeep of graves located on private property. In cases where cemeteries are located on property owned by municipalities, Jeane recommends working with officials on gaining access to the area for grave maintenance that most likely will have to be done by the family.