Cemetery Shenanigans & Porcelain Gallbladders | 4M #136
Welcome to the hundred-and-thirty-sixth edition of Morticians’ Monday Morning Mashup, 4M #136, where we’ll serve up bite-sized, easily-digestible nuggets of the deathcare news you need to crush conversations in the week ahead. Bon appetit!
ICYMI
It may not be the cover, but our friends at Return Home and Recompose made the Rolling Stone! Check out this article on Terramation/human composting/natural organic reduction (warning: it’s paywalled).
Monday morning meme
Yes, it’s from 2023, but now seemed like the perfect time to share this Swift-themed meme!
Scoopers aren’t designed for this
Will the weird woes of cemetery staff never end? As if dealing with roaming wild animals, rogue car chases, vase thieves, and crimes being committed covertly among the gravestones in the dark of night isn’t enough, now an Michigan cemetery has enlisted the help of the police in finding a human “serial pooper” who is using the grounds as a restroom. In fact, the Dearborn police have been called to the cemetery for this reason seven times in the last two months. We wish we were kidding, but no; you can read about it here.
Cycling through cemeteries
An Australian man has made it his mission to visit more than 24,000 cemeteries across the world — on his bicycle. After finding the war diary of his WWI veteran grandfather, Mic Whitty, who was at the time homeless with $35 to his name, first aimed only to retrace his grandfather’s wartime stops through the Western front. However, he has since expanded his plans to include visiting all 24,486 cemeteries where Commonwealth WWI or WWII soldiers are buried. There are 56 countries across five continents in the Commonwealth, and Whitty hopes to continue his visits through 2045 — when he will be 80 years old.
A monumental monument
A colossal 14-foot-high monument at the grave of a 21-year-old cancer victim is raising ire in an Ireland cemetery. At four times the maximum height of gravestones per cemetery regulations, the elaborately carved stone covering the late Charlie McDonagh’s tomb — and the four flags flying high above it — can be seen from nearly a mile away. Charlie’s parents, who are members of the Irish Traveller community (an indigenous ethnic minority similar to gypsies), crowdsourced more than $189k to erect the monument, and believe it is justified as it is in accordance with Traveller traditions. Parishioners of the attached Catholic church are so enraged at the stone that they’ve boycotted services and are attending mass at other churches.
Curiouser and curiouser
Have you ever come across a “porcelain” gallbladder? Apparently this condition, better known as “calcified” gallbladder, is a rare condition that causes the gallbladder to calcify and harden; after death, the organ takes on a whitish-blue color. When researchers first discovered the gallbladder when excavating an abandoned Mississippi asylum cemetery, they weren’t sure what to think of this “archaeological oddity.” The object was “oddly light,” a “stony-beige” color, the size and shape of a quail egg, and “sat in the soil, right in the middle of this person’s torso.” After ruling out a calcified cyst or gallstone, they finally found an expert who recognized the object for what it was.
