PUTNEY-For Rodney Bell, death provides a living. Bell works as a burial excavation specialist - that is, a gravedigger.
When Bell, 57, was a toddler in early 1970, his father, Howard Bell, was working for Washburn Vault, then in West Brattleboro and now in New Hampshire.
"He was going to different cemeteries with [burial] vaults for different funerals, and he met this guy who dug graves in one cemetery, who asked my father to help him," Bell said. "My dad was never one to turn down a job, so they started working together."
Bell explained that, either the town crews or the cemetery crews had done the digging. Eventually, towns didn't want the responsibility and cemeteries didn't want to hire a crew, so they'd ask Bell's father to take over the digging chores.
"Back then, it was a second job," Bell said. "He worked during the day and did the digging at night. He always had someone helping him. It was usually a three-man crew: either my uncle, me, or my older brother, or another man. At one point, it was close to 55 cemeteries my father went to."
Eventually, Bell's uncle couldn't do it anymore, so Bell asked his father if he could join the crew as a regular.
"I was 14 when I started working for him," Bell said. "In those days, when I was in school or later at a full-time job, we worked nights and weekends.
"My dad would be taking care of some funerals while I was digging others," Bell continued. "One time my brother and I were out until 1 a.m. We had three graves to dig in one night: one in Brattleboro, one in Jacksonville, and one in Dover."
Bell continued with his dad until the end of 2000. Then he began working alone on Jan. 1, 2001.
One of the first graves Bell had to dig was that of his own mother, Ruth Bell, who died on Jan. 20 of that year.
"It was hard to do it," he said, "but it was harder to say, 'Let someone else do it.' It was weird. I was thinking so many things while digging."
She was only 58.
"I was still kinda in shock," Bell said. "My family came. We all stayed together as I did the dig."
Bell also dug the grave for his father, who died in 2019.
"Sadly, I've buried many people I know," he said. "Family, friends, schoolmates' parents."
Beyond digging holes
Methods have changed over the years, Bell said.
In the old days, the digging was all by hand. With a three-man crew, two would dig at one time, and if the ground was rocky, they'd consider using a jackhammer.
Then in 1986, Howard Bell bought the first backhoe, and a crew of two could manage the job. Today, on average, Bell said, it takes about 90 minutes to prepare the hole.
"If the cemeteries are open," he said, "I can dig all year. It's a closure thing for people, so if I can do the digging, I prefer to go ahead. In a way, it's a sense of responsibility."
Bell likes being outside, being responsible to people and to himself.
"It's not like a 9-to-5 job," he said. "In other jobs, someone else could be in charge, or if someone else isn't doing their job, it can come back on you. Here, I'm my own boss, and it's all on me. And the work is mostly in the daytime."
Bad weather can make the work challenging, however.
"This spring was horrible," Bell said. "The rain. Every grave I dug filled with water, and I had to pump it out the day of the service. Then I was putting mud back in, and had to go back later to fix things up."
In an emergency, there are others Bell can call on.
"We all have our own territory," he said, "and we help each other out."
The process of grave digging is more complicated than one might think.
"The funeral home calls," Bell said. "I usually get a couple of days' notice. The funeral home orders the vault."
Then, he calls the sexton - the caretaker of the cemetery - and they find the spot.
"I dig the grave. I call the vault company. I try to show up before the service, in case I have to fix anything out of place. During the service, I wait off to the side," Bell explained.
Once the vault is in the ground and the casket is lowered, the vault company installs the concrete cover.
"Then I fill in the grave, rake it out, and seed it," Bell said. "That's that. The burial permit is handed to me, and I send it to the town clerk."
A sense of responsibility
The calls from the funeral home generate mixed feelings, Bell said.
"I'm at their mercy," he said. "I don't wish for a phone call because it means someone has died, but also I need to have those calls come in."
Bell said he sometimes feels overwhelmed by the work - like if he's standing by at one funeral and is scheduled to be at another one in a short amount of time.
"Still, I try to be sympathetic, and empathetic," he said, "because I know it's a really bad time in people's lives."
In 2024, Bell's wife, Maureen, died in her sleep of a heart attack. She was 53.
"I had to work the next day," Bell said, adding that "from a human standpoint, I feel such a sense of responsibility - the situation is consuming that family group, and I have a job to do."
"Empathy is not a character flaw," he said. "It's a good character trait."
The shock of his wife's death at a relatively young age brought home to Bell the necessity of preparing for his own.
"It made me realize I need to take care of things and be prepared so my children don't have to deal with unfinished business," he said.
'You have to have a sense of humor'
The burial business is changing, Bell said. These days he gets a lot of phone calls about cremation burials. Calls about natural burials, where there is no funeral home involved, are also increasing.
Some things don't change, though. Bell's busiest times of year are from mid-April to Memorial Day, and then again in October and November.
Emotional balance is important, Bell said.
"You have to have a sense of humor," he explained. "I used to love to sneak up on my dad when he was digging and scare him."
Now, he said, "that happens to me."
"If someone walks up beside me when I'm on the backhoe, I don't see them or hear them, and then they start talking," Bell said.
"There was one year when I wore my grim reaper costume when digging," he said. "You have to be able to laugh about things."
This News item by Nancy Olson originally appeared in The Commons and was republished in The Commons with permission.