Perpetual Plots & Cemeteries Gone Wild | 4M #163

Welcome to the hundred-and-sixty-third edition of Morticians’ Monday Morning Mashup, 4M #163, where we’ll serve up bite-sized, easily-digestible nuggets of the deathcare news you need to crush conversations in the week ahead. Bon appetit!

We bought a cemetery

Hey, if a movie about a family buying a zoo can be a hit, why can’t a story about a couple buying (and living in) a cemetery work, too? Salon recently published a memoir-like story written by a woman who moves into a renovated church in the middle of a cemetery, after watching the price of the house continue to drop for more than a year on the cult-followed Instagram account Zillow Gone Wild. 

In perpetuity … or not 

A plot owner in Montreal is suing the cemetery where he hopes to be laid to rest after his “in perpetuity” contract was changed to a 99-year lease without his knowledge. Although a 1994 provincial law allowed cemeteries to offer 99-year agreements, it did not give the cemeteries the mandate to change existing contracts, the man is arguing. The cemetery does give plot owners (well, their families) the option of renewing the agreement at year 99 …

That’s why it’s called a deadline

No one knows if it was intentional, but when one Massachusetts news outlet discovered that the annual deadline for the state’s deathcare professionals to renew their respective licenses was always October 31, they thought it was a strange — and apparently newsworthy — coincidence.

Speaking of license renewal …

DouglasNow, a publication based in the city where 18 decomposing bodies were found during a funeral home eviction late last month, has reported that the operation passed an inspection in July — despite the fact that its establishment license had lapsed. Johnson Funeral & Cremation Services owner Chris Johnson, who remains in jail after being arrested on 17 felony counts of abuse of a dead body, had also let his own director and embalmer licenses, due for renewal on June 30, 2024, lapse until September. So, in effect, the funeral home passed the July 19 inspection by the Georgia State Board of Funeral Service despite having three invalid licenses.

Prime real estate

Families picnicking or playing pickleball in one New York City park probably don’t realize that under their feet lie the remains of around 10,000 souls. A large stone monument at the entrance to James J. Walker Park in Greenwich Village explains that the land, now lush and green and full of life, was from 1834 to 1898 known as St. John’s Burial Ground, a cemetery for Trinity Parish church. The fascinating story of this transition is beautifully covered in the Smithsonian magazine, and it is definitely worth a read.