Spring is just around the corner, and that means Maine’s funeral directors are about to get very busy.
Beginning in November each year, when digging graves in the frozen ground becomes near impossible or too costly, the remains of many of the state’s dearly departed who aren’t cremated are housed in above-ground buildings or vaults, often at cemeteries or adjacent to churches.
With the upcoming spring thaw, undertakers such as Tom Daigle in Fort Kent are preparing families for what one Alaskan newspaper called a “somber rite of spring” in the far north.
“If someone passes away in November and you have to wait six months for the burial, it can be difficult,” Daigle said. “[W]hen there is no immediate burial, there is no closure. The spring burial does allow that closure for the families, and I have witnessed that a lot.”
To make sure those families have that opportunity, Daigle’s staff will begin calling them in April to schedule spring burials for the first weeks in May.
“In some ways it does mean they are reliving [the death] all over again,” the Rev. James Nadeau, pastor at St. John Vianney Parish in Fort Kent, said. “But the spring burial is actually a chance for them to get the closure they did not get at the winter service.”
Starting May 8, Nadeau begins a whirlwind tour of the parishes within his spiritual area, presiding over burial — or committal — services from Fort Kent to Allagash.
“I start at 8 a.m. Each takes around 15 minutes,” he said. “I say prayers, we lower the casket and then we move on.”
Normally, according to Nadeau, there are three parts to the funeral service starting at visitations and prayers at the funeral home, the funeral mass and ending with the graveside committal service.
“When the funeral mass ends, I will say, ‘Now let us take our brother or sister to his or her place of rest,’” he said. “In the winter, when we can’t dig the frozen ground, the [funeral] mass ends with my saying ‘go in peace,’ and the body is taken to one of our three vaults.”
Those vaults are owned by the Catholic Church, but occupancy is nondenominational, Nadeau said. There is space in the vault across the road from the Fort Kent Catholic church for 24 caskets, according to Daigle, and room for several more in the funeral home.
“Sometimes we have families where mom or dad has passed already when the second one passes away, they don’t like the idea of them being ‘alone’ in the vault,” he said. “For them we will keep their loved one in a storage room at the funeral home so they are not alone.”
As for the vault itself, Daigle said, the small brick building is secure and “climate controlled” by Mother Nature, the same Mother Nature that makes the buildings a necessity in the first place.
“It’s a rite of spring,” Nadeau said. “Because of where we live, this is how we have had to adapt.
