THE Consistory Court of the diocese of Lincoln has granted a school permitting the exhumation and cremation of stays that had been buried within the consecrated a part of Canwick cemetery in 1992, in order that they could possibly be transported for reburial in a cemetery in Shenzhen, China.
The petitioner for the school was Wing Ling Wong Dolata, whose husband, Siu Lam Wong, died suddenly in October 1992, when Mrs Wong was 42 and had two young children. At that point, no burial plot had been obtained in China, and there was no doubt of transporting the body back to China; so she decided that the burial of her husband would happen within the UK.
In 2013, Mrs Wong had the funds to purchase a burial plot in Shenzhen, adjoining to the one through which other close relations had been buried, and, in 2023, she had the funds to pay for her husband’s stays to be exhumed, cremated, and transported to China.
The Diocesan Chancellor, the Worshipful Judge Mark Bishop, was concerned in regards to the lapse of time before the appliance had been made, and, particularly, the lapse between obtaining the burial plot in Shenzhen in 2013 and the appliance in 2023. That issue was relevant in assessing the genuineness of the explanations set out in Mrs Wong’s application for wanting her husband’s stays returned to Shenzhen.
The Chancellor was satisfied that the reasons given for the delay didn’t rule out her application. It was comprehensible, the Chancellor said, that, as Mrs Wong got older and frailer, the difficulty of where her late husband’s stays needs to be positioned, and in addition hers when the time got here, had grow to be more focused in her mind.
The real justification for Mrs Wong’s application was that it was to be a family grave. She wished her husband’s stays and her own to be united together in a family grave next to her other relatives.
The Chancellor accepted that those wishes were entirely real, and in addition took under consideration Mrs Wong’s particular family circumstances, including the young age of her husband when he died, and the issue of achieving burial in China at the moment.
In those circumstances, it was to be regretted, the Chancellor said, that nobody had fully explained to Mrs Wong on the time of her husband’s death the importance of the permanence of Christian burial within the consecrated a part of the cemetery. But allowance needed to be made for the difficulties of language, which had been an issue in understanding the factual background of Mrs Wong’s application.
It was all the time exceptional to grant an exhumation order, the Chancellor said, but he was satisfied that exceptional reasons did exist in Mrs Wong’s case for the exhumation to be permitted. The interment in a family plot in Shenzhen could be an expression of family unity, and it also needed to be taken under consideration that it was where Mrs Wong wished her own stays to be interred eventually.
Mrs Wong wanted the stays to be cremated within the UK. The Chancellor was content for that to be done for the reason that undertakers had confirmed that to be practical with a bigger latest casket. The ashes could then be taken to Shenzhen and interred there.
The Chancellor ordered that the exhumation should be carried out discreetly and with appropriate screening in order to not alarm those visiting the cemetery, and at a time when there could be minimal risk of tourists’ being aware of the exhumation. The reinterment in Shenzhen must happen inside three months of the exhumation, and the ashes must not be kept awaiting much later interment.
