The Challenges of Cemetery Resale

Mary Mack — The Challenges of Cemetery Resale

My 83-year-old mother still lives in the woods where I grew up. She does not have the internet, but she’s heard of it. And she will ask me to do very uncomfortable things for her online sometimes, just tasks she gives me. She’ll call me up, and often there’s not a hello. It’ll just go like, hey, get on your hand computer and look me up. Why is my cat licking all its fur off?

Or why don’t you get online there and see how much booze can I have with this new medication?

When I want to do these things for my mom, it’s important for me to help her because she has not had an easy life. Her health is bad, money has always been tight, and just seeing my mom go from depressed to happy for an hour is a gift.

Plus, my dad had enough nerve to pass away before I had any means to help him out, so consequently, I am a little overzealous at wanting to help my mother. For example, I will pay somebody to mow my yard, and then I will drive a four-hour round trip to mow my mother’s yard.

In therapy, I learned that this is called codependency. And it’s not a good thing, but I am really good at it. The therapist has tried her best. She has given me assignments. Read the book Codependency No More by Melody Beatty. Hey, how about we make a hand-drawn poster of the tips of how not to be codependent? And I remember going home and digging in my junk drawer for colored pencils, and I squiggled out guidelines like, ​“detach with love,” ​“put your own air.” ​“The boundaries are good!”

And I hung it on my wall, and I mostly forgot about it. A few years ago, at Thanksgiving, I went to visit my mom, just me and her, and my mom pulls out of her worn-out wooly bathrobe an official-looking trifold document, pearlescent, it had mildew stains on it, it smelled like the basement. She says, here, I want you to sell these for me. I’m like, well, what are they? It’s a couple burial plots I’m not gonna use anymore.

Yep, that is not enough information and also too much information.

My mom didn’t even realize she owned these plots. She didn’t remember. She was in the basement looking for yarn and she came across the deed.

And she doesn’t need them because she doesn’t live in this town where the cemetery is located anymore. In fact, she’s never lived in this town. And now she lives even farther away, two hours away. So she also realized that they’d be worth way more than when she bought them in the 1960s, you know, almost 60 years ago. And then I envisioned myself selling these plats and returning home a hero, like, come on, Jan, we’re gonna pay off all your bills and then we’re going to the seafood buffet at the casino.

So she says, all right, get on Greg’s list and sell them for me then.

Maybe there is a Greg’s list. And then she adds, unless You want to use them.

I don’t, I don’t want to, I don’t live in this town either. And in fact, the name of the town is a deal breaker for me because the name of the town is Coon Rapids, Minnesota.

That does not sound like a woke place to get buried.

Nobody wants to live in Coon Rapids, much less die in Coon Rapids, Minnesota. And I thought, wow, that’s going to be a little bit of a challenge for marketing these things.

And a bit of fear crept into my head.

What if I don’t sell these? Will I have to get buried in Coon Rapids? because I know me and I know my codependency, and that is something I would do. But then I also remembered I had already had a little bit of success with online sales. The previous year, I had sold a camper awning on Facebook Marketplace, and after that transaction, I fashioned myself a businesswoman. I thought, you know, not everybody owns a camper, but everybody’s gonna die. Right? It’s a built-in market.

So then I go home, and I realize there are other challenges.

It’s just not a fun sale. When you’re scrolling Facebook Marketplace, you’re not looking for graves. You’re looking for whimsical items like vintage wallpaper or labradoodles or a fog machine, yeah? And I also noticed upon examination of the deed that these are full-sizers. Oh yes, nobody’s getting full-size buried anymore. Cremation is very popular, but full-size buried is a production. They lay it out for display, but with cremation, it’s easy. It’s like, oh, let’s forget this ever happened.

Burn the evidence.

Take a picture of the item you are trying to sell on the internet.

And it turns out you cannot just Google Maps your way to the Tranquility Gardens. Row 40, plots three and five. Oh yeah, three and five. It got harder.

Who is the creeper in plot four?

So I just locate the cemetery in general, and I find the cemetery office, which looks like every other suburban home that has sprouted up since she’s bought these, you know, a beige vinyl-sided split-level ranch. And I go inside. The man brings out some paper maps. Nothing’s online, just some charts and some maps. He unfolds them, and he points to where he thinks these sites might be on the grounds.

And he says, oh, nobody’s gone in there for a while. And I’m like, yeah, I know, because we’ve been hoarding them.

It’s us. And then he takes out a pricing sheet, and he silently points to what these grave sites are worth. And my jaw dropped. It is thousands of dollars. And it reignites my desire to want to sell these things for my mother. I’m like, we’re going to the seafood buffet twice. I can see it. So I go out there. I snap my photo. Don’t even bother. You can just take a picture of a sad field anywhere.

Yeah. I get home, and I figure, well, I’ll put it on Craigslist. I put it in general sales, because I didn’t know.

I had no idea.

And I thought, oh, this photo, it’s so depressing. I’m going to really have to jazz it up with the ad copy if I want to turn heads, right? And so I captioned it, looking for your forever home. Quiet neighbors. Minneapolis adjacent. And then i just sat back and waited for that sweet cemetery resale money to come rolling in. Two weeks went by, nothing. Three weeks week by, nothing. And i thought

Cemetery guy said it could take a while, and I’m like, well, yeah, it took me a month to sell the camper awning, so this sounds, seems normal. And then I changed the caption to be a little more respectful, in case I offended anybody, and I waited. Six months went by, nobody. You know, and at that time, somebody suggested, well, have you checked the spam box on your email? And I thought, oh, no.

Probably dozens of people have died. And yeah, and they’re all trying to contact me and it’s in my junk mail. So I look and there’s nothing, there’s still nothing, nobody.

And then about a year in, after not hearing one word, I wake up in the morning having these little panics. to have to get buried in Coon Rapids.

I grew up poor. These are worth thousands of dollars. I cannot waste these sites. But this fear prompted me to up my game in marketing, and I printed out hard copy flyers. I printed them, and I drove to Coon Rapids again, looking for bulletin boards.

There are no bulletin boards in Coon Rapids, Minnesota. I had a long talk with a 19-year-old grocery store manager about the benefits of bulletin boards for older people. Nobody cares.

I took out a classified ad in the Penny Saver. That’s a hard copy publication. And still nothing. Nothing. I failed.

I did all that. And I know my mom will still love me, even though I’m not a cemetery resale mogul.

She doesn’t probably even remember I’m trying to sell them. She’s just crocheting her hats, living her life.

But I feel horrible. I do. I feel… And I’m convincing myself, well, Coon Rabbit is not bad.

And I’m just… I gave up, basically. And then for me, when I give up, it’s sometimes a good thing because my brain slows down, I think more calmly, I remember that how not to be codependent hand-drawn poster on my wall. And I think, yeah, maybe I don’t want to waste these burial plots, but I also don’t want to waste all the work I’ve done on myself, right? I have tools. I have mental and emotional tools. I have read books. I have paid for therapy on a sliding scale.

I don’t have to get buried in the plots my mom accidentally purchased in the 1960s, and neither do you, if it should ever come up.

And this may seem like an obvious choice to most of you in here, but for me, it’s a big step.

A big step. I, ten years ago, would have just let myself go and died in Coon Rapids, but not today.

That being said, if you are looking for your forever home and plots to each other, by the way, it’s just a weird numbering system, we figured it out.

If you’re looking, please find me, I’ll make you a great deal. Thank you.