A MOTHER has been granted a school to exhume the stays of her son, who died 33 years ago, in order that she could have them cremated and reinterred in a family plot in a cemetery.
Sharon Long’s son, Ryan Edward Stuart Good, died on 22 June 1992 from smoke inhalation in a house fire. Owing to those circumstances, she had not wanted his body to be cremated in 1992. He was buried within the churchyard of St John the Baptist, Belleau, where her own father tended.
For a few years, Mrs Long had visited the grave together together with her father, and that had given her great comfort, the Consistory Court of the diocese of Lincoln heard. Her father was now now not in a position to tend the churchyard, and since then it had reverted to nature. Mrs Long stated that that had made it too difficult for her to go to her son’s grave, since the churchyard now had sunken graves, molehills, and red ants.
She explained that she now wished to have her son’s stays exhumed and cremated in order that his ashes could possibly be interred within the grave of her mother at Louth cemetery. Mrs Long and other members of her family wished to be interred in that grave eventually.
The Rural Dean supported her application for a school, and the undertakers confirmed that exhumation was still technically attainable.
The Diocesan Chancellor, the Worshipful Judge Mark Bishop, said that the presumption was that the burial of human stays in consecrated ground was everlasting. That presumption arose from the Christian theology of burial, which was that the funeral itself articulated very clearly that the aim was to recollect before God the departed, to present thanks for his or her life, to commend them to God the merciful redeemer and judge, and to commit their body to burial.
The everlasting burial of the body or of cremated stays was to be seen as an emblem of entrusting the person to God for resurrection. The commending, entrusting, and resting in peace didn’t sit easily with “portable stays”, which suggested the other: reclaiming possession and restlessness and holding on the “symbol” of human life moderately than a giving back to God.
The principle of permanence could possibly be departed from, the Chancellor said, provided that there have been special circumstances that justified an exception to the principle by which Mrs Long’s son, Ryan, was laid to rest in 1992, and his stays shouldn’t now be disturbed.
The only basis for taking the exceptional step of exhumation can be, the Chancellor said, if to achieve this would promote a way of family unity by interring his ashes within the family grave that currently contained the stays of his grandmother.
Mrs Long had said that family unity can be promoted by that, and that she can be higher in a position to tend Ryan’s grave in such a spot, as compared with the prevailing churchyard.
The Chancellor took into consideration that, although there had not been any mistake in burying Ryan in his existing location, the circumstances of his death needed to be taken into consideration when assessing his mother’s application for a school. The reasons that cremation didn’t happen in 1992 plainly played an element in Mrs Long’s unease with the present interment, the Chancellor said.
But, the Chancellor said, that factor alone wouldn’t be enough to displace the presumption of permanence. He ruled, nonetheless, that the need for a family grave, with all members of the family united in a single place, expressed family unity and will justify taking the exceptional course of permitting an exhumation.
The faculty was granted for the exhumation to be carried out discreetly, with appropriate screening in order to not alarm those visiting the churchyard, and at a time when there can be minimal risk of holiday makers’ being aware of the exhumation.
The interment in Louth cemetery must happen inside one month of the exhumation, and Ryan’s ashes weren’t to be kept awaiting later interment.
