NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Six days a week for the past four decades, 67-year-old Daniel Jackson has shown up to work at New Orleans cemeteries. He’s seen lightning strike stone angels and hurricanes topple tombstones. He’s buried toddlers, Katrina victims, convicted killers and his own siblings. And on a recent spring day, he lounges in a plastic chair wedged in the shade of Carrollton Cemetery and describes his longtime profession as “quiet and peaceful.”
Jackson’s former boss, Henry Nelson, who hung up his own shovel years ago, sits with his legs crossed next to him and stares out at a labyrinth of weathered tombstones. He is as quiet as the surrounding sepulchers, but when asked his age, he announces with a slow cackle that he’s not a day past eighteen.
Jackson learned much of his grave-digging craft from Nelson, who eventually surrenders his actual age - 81. The two have spent many hot New Orleans days in the city’s cemeteries, watching over the long deceased and preparing graves for the newly passed.
“He was a great gravedigger,” Jackson declares about his former boss. When probed to explain what exactly constitutes a “great gravedigger,” Jackson lists three categories: size, depth and decency. Checking each of those boxes is especially hard in the city-owned graveyards where attendants must dig manually.
Depending on the temperature and precipitation, hand-digging a grave can take anywhere from an hour to two and a half hours. To meet city standards, each grave must be three feet and five inches deep, but Nelson taught Jackson to dig closer to four feet “just to be on the safe side.” And it needs to be wide enough—two to three feet— to fit a coffin. An ill-fitting grave can really disturb the sanctity of a funeral service.
As for the last condition, decency, Jackson explains, “You want the same respect for your family as you give other families. I treat everyone in this cemetery as if they were my family and therefore it is going to be done exactly right.”
When they first started working together, Nelson passed along gravedigging lore, the “old-school kind you won’t find in any book,” Jackson says. For example, if the sight or smell of remains sends your stomach churning, drink some milk. Not that Jackson really needs to remember that tip. He never experienced the creepiness or revulsion others often feel toward cemeteries, in part because his mother used to send him down to Carrollton Cemetery to play as a child.
“I guess she always taught us that the dead humans in there can’t do you no harm, but the live ones out there can do a whole lot,” he considers while stabilizing a wobbly angel atop a nearby tomb.
Born and raised in New Orleans, Jackson started working part time in the city’s cemeteries in his early 20s. The wages kept him afloat as he completed the nursing program at Delgado Community College and then seminary school. He worked briefly as a nurse at the Veterans Affairs hospital, but soon committed to the cemetery full time. Nowadays, he spends weekdays posted up at one of the three city cemeteries under his care - Carrollton, Valence Street and St. Mary. On Saturdays, he prepares for funerals. And on Sundays, he occasionally preaches at Saint Michael Spiritual Church in Baton Rouge.
“I’ve worked with the living, the dying and the dead,” he says. “I don’t believe in that spooky talk. I believe your body goes back to dirt and your soul goes back to God. Ain’t nothing scary about that. Some people have wild ideas, but I don’t. Not one bit.”
Like most New Orleans cemeteries, Carrollton is congested with ornate figurines perched atop crumbling marble and sprawling family plots lodged within the wild, undulating ground. The stained, chipped tombs wear the scars of a battle against a tempestuous climate. Some mausoleums risk being swallowed completely by vegetation, while others have already caved to its demands. Just the other day, Jackson called upon the SPCA to extract a clan of raccoons living inside a family’s tomb.
Jackson does his best to maintain the graves, but when families move away or forget about their plots, there’s only so much he can do.
“Mother Nature dictates the whole show,” he says.
Jackson is a walking encyclopedia of Carrollton’s dead. He can recite a brief history of each person he has had the “opportunity” to put to rest. Inside one mausoleum lies a respected doctor who succumbed to a heart attack while on the way to a patient. Another houses an elderly woman, who used to tend to the tomb on a daily basis. Whatever a person’s life history, Jackson says he treats them equally.
“We’ve buried some people that were violent or criminals, but we treat everybody the same. Either black or white or this or that. We’re not prejudiced,” he says.
Jackson, 67, has experienced a lot of loss in his own life. He lowered his sister into his family plot in Carrollton only weeks ago. She now rests beside his son, grandson, first wife, nephew, mother, grandmother, grandfather, grandson, aunt and cousins. He estimates Carrollton contains around 15 or 20 of his family members.
“I often say we rent these bodies. And when we get tired of paying rent on them, we go to the other side. No more water, cable or light bills,” he muses.
A few days later, Jackson digs the grave of an elderly woman, who coincidentally spent over 30 years of her own life tending to a nearby cemetery with her husband. He shovels pile after pile onto the other side of the plot. Strike, scoop, toss.
Two feet in, he has created a completely flat rectangular hole with ruler-straight borders. He pauses and sits on the cement ledge of her tomb. The ground is cooperative that day— soft and moist— and a cluster of clouds shields the sun. The woman’s funeral isn’t for three more days. By then, the rain and wind could wash all the dirt back into the grave, Jackson concedes. If so, he’ll just restart. No use in trying to control nature or death.
Despite being confronted with death on a daily basis, Jackson does not show any signs of being haunted by his own mortality. He knows he will be buried in his clergy robes alongside his mother. And if he could, he would dig his own grave. Otherwise, he doesn’t put much thought into the timing or the circumstance of his demise.
“I know one day I am gonna die. I don’t know when or how, but I, of course, know I am going to die,” he says. “One day, I’m going to be out there with them. My great big family. That’s the way it is.”
___
Information from: The Times-Picayune, http://www.nola.com
Please read our comment policy before commenting.