In a message dated 8/20/99 1:03:51 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:

> > Where do you get placed after 20 years?

In offline conversation with my German friend I was advised that the idea is
if someone does not keep paying for the upkeep that the cemetary keepers
wait long enough for the decomposition to work and then they compact you down
and bury someone new over the top. Always buried in a wooden box to allow
full compaction.

I was also told, true story, about a man that was cremated and his ashes
divided up in paper bags between three children. One child, a son, decided to
carry the ashes to all of the neat places he had been to with his father and
to scatter a few ashes around. It took three years of scattering. In the mean
time, whenever the paper bag was left around the house a few ashes would
invariably get free. The wife was always in a fret when cleaning house if she
was vacuming up her father-in-law.

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