The Sections No One Takes Photos Of

Each cemetery where I've worked has a peaceful area. Not the one with the slanted slate and the wrought iron fencing, where photos are taken. The other one. Mown grass, taken care of, and void of gravestones. Someone is buried beneath every inch of it.

I have worked with a little team for eleven years finding those graves and marking them. We use burial ledgers, plat maps, and cemetery office cards.

Our existence is due to the lack of funds rather than neglect, and that is why I have opinions regarding affordable headstones which the majority of people in the memorial industry consider quite unromantic. Such a stone which a family could afford and which goes to the ground within a year is better than a beautiful one that is postponed forever.

Why Does the Grass Remain Empty?

It is a pattern that is true for every ledger I have seen, from a municipal cemetery in Wichita to a parish cemetery near Baton Rouge.

A death occurs suddenly. The funeral itself consumes all the money the family has. According to the National Funeral Directors Association, the median cost of a funeral with viewing and burial is somewhere above eight thousand dollars, and it doesn't include the price of the marker, the plot, and the opening and closing fees the cemetery charges. Social Security provides a lump sum death payment of $255, the amount that hasn't been adjusted since 1954 and that nowadays doesn't even cover the price of a tank of gas per each mourner.

Thus, the family does the sensible thing. We'll get the stone next year.

Next year there is a leak in the roof. After that, somebody loses a job. In five years, the grave has become a place the family knows how to reach by counting rows from the oak, and the moment when a marker was necessary has quietly passed. I have talked to dozens of people who were in such a situation, and none of them was careless. They were just asked to make a discretionary purchase in the worst month of their lives.

What We Have Learned About Costs, From the Wrong Side of Them

We buy markers. We organize fundraising campaigns and take donations, placing between fifteen and thirty stones per year in several states.

Buying in such volume, on budget, with no margin for mistakes, teaches you certain things which a showroom visit does not. 

The first one is that flat granite markers aren't a lower-class memorial. 

In most American cemeteries, they are just a standard option, which has been true ever since memorial parks became popular in the middle of the previous century. The flush marker made of grey granite contains the name, two dates, and a line of scripture as well as a four-foot upright does. Cemetery visitors who didn't know the deceased read the same information from both.

The second one is that the price difference between a simple stone marker and a modest one is smaller than people assume, while the price difference between the modest one and a custom-carved marker is immense. Standard sizes, a standard font, and one emblem are the best combination. Any deviation from the template means the proofing time added, and the proofing time is where budgets silently bleed.

The third one is that the inclusions matter more than the sticker. We have been offered the low base price and were invoiced separately for the lettering, as if they sold a car to us and invoiced the wheels separately. When Capital Grave Markers includes the engraving and shipping in the price rather than offers them separately, this isn't marketing. This is the difference between the quote which we could plan around and the quote which we couldn't.

The One Thing No One Tells Families

Installation is separate. Almost always, everywhere, from every supplier.

The cemetery decides who will set the marker, what foundation it requires, and what price it charges for the installation. These fees belong to the cemetery, not the memorial company. Capital Grave Markers is very frank about this issue and will help the families find a local installer at a reasonable price, which is honest and which still means the families need a second number in the budget before they commit to the first.

Asking the cemetery office three questions before you order something is the rule. What are the permitted dimensions in this section. What foundation is required. What is the charge for setting the marker. The families who ask those questions first almost never get surprised. Those who don't ask first get surprised almost always.

Where the Money Really Is

There is help available, but most of the families don't find it because no one gives a list in the funeral home.

Veterans are, more than any other category, the category which the families forget. The Department of Veterans Affairs provides a headstone or marker for free for eligible veterans buried in any cemetery in the country, both national and private, and eligibility stretches much farther and covers more service categories than most of the families believe. We marked graves in Ohio and in the South Carolina upcountry where the family didn't know that the man buried there was an eligible veteran. Check before you buy. If the VA marker doesn't fit, buy privately using the veteran discounts which most of the suppliers give, but check first.

The payment structure is the other lever which is undervalued. Through August 31, the Summer Sale at Capital Grave Markers reduces the price by 25% for the veterans and first responders who pay fully, 10% on the installment basis, 20% and 5% for everyone else, and the same 25% and 10% for the families ordering two or more markers, which is important for the couples' plots which we mark regularly. The in-house plans last for twelve months without interest. Klarna and Affirm extend it to twenty-four months without interest, with no money down. Pre-need arrangement lasts for thirty-six months. The written quote from a competitor will be matched by 10%.

Spread over twelve months without interest, a flat marker becomes a monthly payment smaller than a telephone bill. Just this one reframing moves more of our families from the fence than any discussion of granite.

What is Actually Needed for Making an Order Under Pressure

The speed and cheapness aren't the same things, and the families under pressure are charged for confusing them.

The fast path is dull and it works. Choose the in-stock size in grey, black, or red granite. Make the inscription consist of name, dates, and one line only. Use the free 3D preview and its two revisions to catch everything that can't be fixed after the cutting, which in our experience is always either a date or a mistake in spelling and never the artwork. Approve quickly and in writing. Start the cemetery paperwork in parallel rather than in sequence, because the overlapping of processes is where all the days are won. The 60-day completion guarantee is the real commitment of the supplier and depends on the family approving its part of the order quickly.

One caveat regarding the days. In Illinois, Ohio, upstate New York, Pennsylvania, and the general northern tier, the cemeteries stop installing markers when the ground freezes, which usually happens by mid-November. In Texas, Florida, southern California, and the Gulf States, it isn't a constraint. A family in Tacoma and a family in Orlando can order during the same week and see their marker installed months apart, and this has nothing to do with the supplier.

The Thing I Did Not Expect

I came into this work thinking that the emotional charge is in the ceremony. It is not. It is in the moment when a family sees the name in the stone for the first time and stops describing where the grave is located by counting the rows.

We've done this in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas, New Jersey, North Carolina, Washington, and up and down California, and the reaction doesn't depend on the state, the budget, or on whether the marker cost three hundred dollars or three thousand. Only the fact whether the marker exists changes.

That is the whole point of buying within your means rather than postponing the order till the year when you'll be able to pay more. The catalog and the current conditions are at capitalgravemarkers.com, and the stone which is going to be installed is always the right one.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Aleksandra Djurdjevic          

Senior Content Creator

Aleksandra Djurdjevic is a senior writer and editor, covering surf, kayak and various watersports activities. She has previously worked as ESL teacher for English Tochka. Aleksandra graduated from the Comparative Literature department at the Faculty of Philosophy in Serbia. Aleksandra’s love for the ocean / rivers, getting out waves, season after season, seeking epic adventures across the globe helps her continue to be a top expert at CSG.