Finding a forever home: pick-your-own plot

Monday, 11 December 2017

Waikumete's wildflowers signal the start of spring.

With Christmas ticked off for another year, people will be sleeping off the day, clearing away wrapping paper and empty bottles, or maybe heading to the beach.

Before my partner Neill and I go searching for a piece of sand, we first need to find a patch of dirt.

Many flowers, mostly South African and Mediterranean species, have escaped the graves on which they were planted and now grow wild in Waikumete.

During our visit to hometown Auckland this week, we'll be meeting a real estate agent of sorts to purchase a small plot of land in which to spend forever. In our 50s, it might seem early, even a little ghoulish, to be planning for the next life, but if we learnt anything from the first half of our lives, it is that anything can happen, often when you least expect it. Along with wearing clean underwear, pre-buying a burial plot is a way of feeling prepared should a killer blow strike.

This has been a sad year for our family, losing the last three of the senior generation within a few months. Dad, 93, and his kid sister, Alma, 90, went domino-style within a week.

Pohutukawas at Christmas frame Waikumete's Chapel of Faith in the Oaks, built as a mortuary chapel in 1886.

As my poet cousin, Diane Brown, put it, we're all 'accomplished mourners, by now, easy with eulogies, sausage rolls, wine, repeated platitudes, and promises to meet in the spring perhaps, after this season of funerals'.

**READ MORE:

Markers of graves in Waikumete's natural burial area must be biodegradable, along with the coffin and adornments.

* A pink ribbon garden

* More families opting to take control of the funeral process

The sprawling 108 hectares of Waikumete attract native wildlife, including birds and lizards.

* Cemetery seeks answers to issue of space**

The cluster of funerals has prompted Neill and me to question 'home' and where we want to spend forever. With no children to clean up after us, and a desire to pick our own row in life's last strawberry patch, we need to get serious.

Waikumete is strapped for space and nearing burial capacity.

Christchurch has been home for a quarter of a century, but we're born Westies. When the final whistle blows, we will be drawn towards our roots – the place where three generations of our family are already dug in. That is Waikumete, Auckland's mega-centre for the dead in Glen Eden. Sprawling over 108 hectares, it already has a population of 70,000-plus.

Initially, an eco burial – becoming fertiliser for a regenerating native forest – appealed. I emailed Waikumete for the nitty gritty on its natural burial area. 'Burials are made within the active upper soil levels at single depth, with a minimum depth cover of 800mm.'

Soldiers buried in neat military lines at Waikumete provide a sense of order.

Active. There was something troubling about that word. I have nothing against worm farms (we have one in our backyard happily munching through kitchen waste), but I have no desire to end up in one.

There are other rules. Bodies must not be embalmed and clothes, coffins and adornments, including the grave marker, must be biodegradable. Families are given GPS co-ordinates to keep track of loved ones.

Wildflowers survive in Waikumete's poor clay soils.

I'm usually happy to leave nothing but footprints, but on entering the final frontier, it would be good to leave an impression on this earth; to be remembered. Something a little more tangible than 'X and Y' marks the spot.

One night in bed, I binge-read the 171-page Waikumete Cemetery Conservation and Reserve Management Plan (as you do). I learnt Waikumete is fast running out of room. Much of the spare land remaining from the 108 hectares set aside in 1886 for a cemetery is steep and inhospitable. Unless more land is prepared, the cemetery is nearing burial capacity.

Where did we want to pop up daisies? The traditional option of Waikumete or somewhere more left field?

I resisted the urge to wake Neill with my findings, but, suddenly, the search for our forever home became more urgent. If we wanted to choose our final resting place, the time was nigh.

So, what makes a good plot? On a fine summer's day, with life bouncing along nicely, who wants to think about it? But it was something we needed to tackle. Did we even share the same death goals? Would Neill – strapping fit and jammed on 'go' in real life – be restful company in the afterlife?

The pearly gates of Swanson Cemetery, which still has room for pre-sold burial plots.

Waikumete's one-stop shop has a rich history: soldiers in regimented rows from the world wars, a mass grave for victims of the 1918 influenza epidemic, a monument for the unidentified remains from the 1979 Erebus plane crash, and famous occupants such as racing legend Bruce McLaren. It is also home to the infamous John Caffrey and Henry Penn, both executed for murder in 1887 and rumoured to have been buried standing up.

My own relatives have been buried at Waikumete for a century. Mausoleums for the Lebanese and Croatian families that settled in West Auckland – the Corbans, Nobilos and Ercegs – vie for attention in the dress circle. On the crest of the hill above is a view of the Waitakeres, literally, to die for.

The Swanson Cemetery grave of a teenager who died in a train accident is a testament to his family's love.

In spring, Waikumete's wildflowers bloom. Many South African and Mediterranean species have escaped the graves on which they were planted and now grow wild in the poor clay soils, the biggest collection of their type outside their home countries.

Ah, Waikumete clay. The gumland clay which clings impossibly to sneakers and refuses to be washed away. In winter, the place becomes a bog and that is one of Waikumete's negatives, along with its sheer size. Even armed with a map, it can be tricky to find a grave.

After a long search for our forever home, Swanson Cemetery's relaxed rural vibe and wildflowers won us over.

Once Waikumete was a day trip by train. The sexton would wait at the train station with a wheelbarrow to push coffins up the final incline. Today, Waikumete is ringed with busy roads like clogged arteries and railway lines shunting commuters around Auckland. How much rest would there be?

Here is a place where the dead heavily outnumber the living; where populations are divided by religion and creed. In the end, we were spared from choosing Waikumete, because it rejected us. I discovered only plots in the natural burial area, the Urupa (Māori burial area) and in public mausoleums can be pre-bought. Eco burials are a little too real, we're not brown and we're not keen on shacking up with perfect strangers we'll never get a chance to meet.

If not Waikumete, then where?

Ironically, the answer came, not from the living, but from the dead. One of Dad's rest home companions, Mrs Singh, died and we were sent the funeral booklet, along with a map to her final resting place. On a visit to Auckland, we decided to pay our respects.

Swanson Cemetery is at the foot of the Waitakere Ranges. Driving through its pearly white gates, we immediately liked the peaceful, casual vibe.

On this quiet two hectares of hinterland ringed with tall pines, tui call and red wildflowers bloom. A yucca grows from a rock garden on a grave, which has a wooden letterbox marked 'Michael'. Other plots sprout native grasses; one has a decorative pagoda and another, a can of Woodstock Bourbon. Catholics are separated from the Protestants, but in a subtle way. A WWI gunner is buried among civilians. A young man felled by a tree branch while clearing land in Gisborne in 1907, was sent home to Swanson.

The family of Keenan Matthes, a 16-year-old rising rugby star killed by a train in April while running wearing headphones, has also brought their son here. Six months on, his gravesite is homely with rugby memorabilia, artificial turf and several park benches, one engraved 'Stand tall Chief man'. A visiting relative told us they have bought five plots beside Keenan's to keep the family tight.

Nearby, two women sat patiently at the foot of graves. Their husbands, taken this year, they told us. Everyone joined in the search for Mrs Singh and we found her, reunited with her husband in their forever home, edged with a white, iron railing fence. In such a small cemetery, the families know the newbie graves and when their occupants arrived.

With the sun sinking into the hills and light dappling the stony grey odes to love, this felt as much a place for the living, as for the dead. A place where someone might strum a guitar at sundown, while widows mew. Perhaps, a barbecue and bonhomie at Christmas.

I knew, just by looking at Neill, he was thinking the same as me. This is the 'where'. I emailed Waikumete's staff, who also look after Swanson Cemetery, asked if it had double burial plots and pointed out Neill is reed thin. The answer was 'yes' and we could pre-purchase, too.

This week, we're finally entering the Auckland property market; buying our 2.4m by 1.2m piece of paradise. Our preferred elevated section of the cemetery is known as the 'Protestant Area Old', but its residents aren't necessarily Protestant. I was raised Catholic and Neill is a sceptic with Irish ancestry, so by settling in Swanson, we'll be doing our bit for world peace.

We considered buying side-by-side plots (also for peace's sake), rather than a double-depth (nobody wants to be on the bottom bunk), but practicality won out.

All we need to do now is sign up, pay $3100, and we have 60 years in which to act. In the treacherous business of death, we've at least resolved the 'where' and the 'who with', but, Lord knows, we'll be doing our damnedest to avoid moving in.