Memento Mori

[jadelennox]

DEAR ABBY: I need a second opinion. My grandfather sold me an old farmstead that has been in the family for 200 years. Last week, he showed me a wooded area behind the barn with a human skull. He told me that when his father died more than 50 years ago, he was curious about how long it would take a body to decompose, so he left his body in the woods to keep track of its progress. He has 50 years' worth of pictures and notes. He told the rest of the family that Great-Grandpa had been cremated, and apparently no one questioned him about the ashes.

At this point, the skull is all that's left. I checked with a lawyer, who tells me that in my state no laws were broken. That said, I don't want my great-grandfather's skull sitting in the woods behind my barn! My husband says I should quietly bury it, burn the pictures and the notes and forget about it. That just doesn't feel right to me.

It feels like I'm helping my grandfather get away with something and it feels "icky." Should I tell the rest of the family, or continue allowing them to believe that Great-Granddad was cremated? I'm resenting my grandfather for putting me in the middle of this, and any advice you have would be greatly appreciated. — BOUGHT MORE THAN I BARGAINED FOR

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DEAR BARGAINED: Your letter is a first. Why do I get the impression that your grandfather must have HATED his father to have treated his remains so disrespectfully? The farmstead and everything that goes with it is yours now to keep or dispose of.

What you need to do is decide whether to donate your great-grandfather's skull to a medical or dental school (or coven?), place it in a columbarium or bury it on your property. As to whether to tell the rest of the family, what positive thing would be accomplished by sharing this unpleasantness with them? You are a caring individual; let your conscience be your guide.

via

Comments

[oursin]

I suppose it depends a lot on local laws, but my impression is - and again, this is local laws - is that things have tightened up even more or less Within My Own Lifetime.

I.e. in my career as an archivist we received some papers of a historian of public health which included, in a plastic shopping bag, some bones they had been given from an excavation when a burial site was discovered while digging the foundations for a new Tesco supermarket.

In Broad Street, Soho. One of their subjects was cholera in London.

The diggings actually turned out to be a C17th plague burial pit*.

But disposing of the bones, when legislation on the subject had significantly tightened up, was a real headache. In the end we donated them to the Museum of London to rejoin the rest of the output of the dig.

But this one is is real quandary - was grandpa a thwarted forensic pathologist obliged to take over the family farm?

*Nobody came down with plague in our offices.

[lilysea]

For fuck's sake, human remains that could have cholera or bubonic plague should be in sealed packaging that is as air tight as you can make it

even a double-bagged or triple-bagged large zip loc bag inside a foam esky that had been sealed shut with duct tape would have been better

[oursin]

Yes, all very bad practice, but maybe common habit at the time - supposition that they were called in because of their known expertise on Broad Street, but cannot imagine what the archaeologists were thinking, handing out souvenirs.

More recently I remember the hoohahs over plague-pits discovered during the recent Crossrail excavations.