Most places in the US people buy a spot for their family member that is supposed to be everlasting.
In Europe however it's common practice to reuse graves. People buy a spot for however long it's expected for a body/urn to decompose. After that they can choose to re-buy the spot for another number of years if they so wish. If they don't want to, another person will be buried there.
And then there's the Paris catacombs solution. Frees up grave space, and creates a tourist attraction. Yes, I was morbid enough to take the tour and enjoy it, not morbid enough to steal bones / teeth though.
Americans are going an interesting direction where they are getting cremated more and then scattered someplace special. This is kinda cool because theres no need for expensive grave space and they can return to nature. Its not so cool when someone decides to scatter them at Disney's Haunted Mansion ride and the ride gets shut down so they can clean the ride.
In New Orleans, the cuty is too close to sea level, there aren't nearly enough places to bury corpses that they wouldn't float up out of. So, they re-use crypts. In the south coast climate, with the sun beating down on the sealed crypt and heating the interior, the decay of a body is greatly accelerated. A year and a day after a body was placed in the crypt, it can be opened up again, whatever charred-looking remnants are still there are swept into a spot in the back, and a new body can be placed inside.
The whole concept of paying for a grave is a tad ridiculous and outdated in my mind. My grandfather insisted it, and set the money aside for it. It was a whole thing. My grandmother was like, eh... just chuck my ashes in the ocean. A much more beautiful moment considering the dolphins followed our boat.
I guess some of us look at it very differently.
My parents bought me my plot when I was around 5 or so. The local cemetery opened up a new section and the whole family bought plots together. Although my aunt went broke and had to sell 3 of her's so now we have some riffraff with us. But I find it kinda comforting to know where I will end up. Although the Cemetary on the other side of town is prettier.
There was a women who died back in the early 1800s here and her family buried her on this hill she requested to be buried on. Years latter the county decided to build a road and it went right over her grave. Her family wasn't to happy about it so her grandson camped on her grave with a shotgun threatening the road crew. The county relented and split the road around her grave rather than leveling the hill out and paving over it. 185 years later they wanted to widened the road and dig up her remains. People threw a fit about it and so while they dug up her and 6 other people who happened to be with her. They then put them back in new coffins where they found them and built the road around them but now it looks like a sidewalk with a plaque in the middle of a road instead of the large mound with a headstone in it so idiot flying down the road at night don't kill themselves. I guess we are serious on that forever stuff here.
I thought they generally took the bones to an ossuary. Or built things out of them. Look up bone chapels, because there are apparently several chapels made almost entirely of human remains.
@tomyironmane
The bone chapels are not very common and are uselly built with bones from war and/or plauge that left alot of bodys. One of the most famous is the catacombs in Paris.
But also churches like Kostnice Sedlec outside praha. There is also a small one in the center of Milano.
@tomyironmane My wife's grandma died last year, and her dad was dead for a long time now, and they planned on burying in the same spot, because the spots here are insanely pricey to get. So, it was supposed to be empty, turns out it wasn't. Something has mixed up, probably the casket was lacquered or something and withstood for too long, they ended up unearting her dad's skeleton, during the burial no less, it was all really, really weird. She said later, when she returned, that this definitely put a lot of thing in perspective. Long story short: they don't move them.
Bone chapels were made when after plagues the cemeteries were full to the brim, in Paris it was so bad that dogs could reach the top layer of burial ground. That's why the bone chapels were made. I don't think they are routinely made now, even though there are way more people living and dying.
When I die I don't want to be buried in a cemetery, but in a forest (or actually they can just leave my body in a forest for animals to eat. I probably wont care anymore then). This way I will never have to share my grave. xD
@Lumpex Have a tree planted over you. You feed the tree as it grows.
Extra bonus: if the tree ever falls in a wind storm, there is a chance that your remains will be pulled up with the roots. This creates a rather macabre surprise and eery story for future generations!
27