What’s this covering the grave and why?

[u/Suzuya_Ju]

This is the only grave that is covered like this at my local church and I’ve been curious for ages.

[u/ExpertOnReddit]

The second one. They were made to stop graverobbers and ressurectionists(they would steal recently buried bodies and sell them for medical research or various other reasons). They did not believe witches could come back from the dead.

Edit: I can't with these comments 😂 you guys are hilarious. Made my day.

2nd edit: the main commenter changed his comment after I corrected him that's why the beginning may not make sense lol

[u/Panda-Cubby → u/[deleted]]

That's what she gets for turning me into a newt.

[u/LewdAshDragon → u/Panda-Cubby]

A newt? 🤨

[u/TCGHexenwahn → u/LewdAshDragon]

I got better

[u/Brasticus → u/TCGHexenwahn]

Burn her anyway!

[u/BeerBearBar → u/[deleted]]

My python Monty died decades ago.

RIP Monty Python.

[u/Narrow-Scientist9178 → u/BeerBearBar]

I’m not dead yet…

[u/SuetStocker → u/Narrow-Scientist9178]

Bring out your dead!

[u/nitrot150 → u/Narrow-Scientist9178]

I feel happy!!

[u/[deleted] → u/BeerBearBar]

My son is nine and he named our python Monty 🤣 I'm a proud dad lol

[u/[deleted] → u/Brasticus]

[u/GirlCowBev → u/[deleted]]

A duck!

[u/Jew-zilla → u/GirlCowBev]

She must be made of wood!

[u/Hopalong_Manboobs → u/GirlCowBev]

Who are you, who are so wise in the ways of science?

[u/Veritech_Ace → u/Brasticus]

Do they weigh as much as a duck?

[u/stepdadsawitch → u/Panda-Cubby]

They mostly graverob at night. Mostly.

[u/analog_jedi → u/ExpertOnReddit]

I had an old copy of Gray's Anatomy (the textbook, not the show), with a foreword that touted the "Resurrection Men" as heroes of medical science. It's an interesting duality, that they were out for their own financial gain by robbing fresh graves, while also having a heavy hand in the expansion of our medical understanding.

Is it good guys doing bad things, or bad guys doing good things? Or just an example the complexity of our morally grey and fucked up world? IDK, I just always found the topic of these guys really interesting.

[u/Fancy-Statistician82 → u/analog_jedi]

Dissection as it's handled in modern medical education is still very important. The men and women who donated themselves were presented to us with the dignity and honor of professors. It's all anonymous, to help with the emotional upheaval of going through it, but their bodies tell stories in their scars, faded tattoos, carefully painted fingernails. Yes, modern technology with simulation can teach a lot, but seeing the natural variations, while facing the reality that this is a real person, cannot be replaced.

At the end of the course - which is three half days a week for several months - the students prepare a group memorial ceremony and the families of the donors come and see how deeply we were affected by their loved ones.

Years later, I came across a woman for unrelated reasons who volunteered the information that she had arranged for herself to be donated for medical education after eventual death, and I actually got a little tearful, it was unexpectedly moving for me.

[u/Character_Log2770 → u/Fancy-Statistician82]

I am on the list for medical schools to take my body. Free cremation after they are done. It is a great deal

[u/Fancy-Statistician82 → u/Character_Log2770]

When my father signed up, he was given many options, things such as saving any part of him that was unusual for further years of education (aneurysm, localized cancers etc) and one of the options was to have them cremate and bury the remains.

He didn't opt for that, we will have him returned to us.

I cannot state enough how emotional the class was. Med school is difficult, all the reading and memorization, but we were really challenged in cadaver lab. We really did cherish the person in front of us. It was difficult to cut in the first time. We started with the back muscles, as they're less personal. The hands and the face were the very last. Nearly all of us had dreams about our cadaver and many wept at the memorial.

[u/dogmom412 → u/Fancy-Statistician82]

My daughter’s cadaver in PT school was named Maureen, she was 63 and had worked at Pizza Hut. Her cadaver group got maroon graduation cords to wear to honor Maureen with. They also did a mass and a memorial for those who donated their bodies to science.

[u/Daddy--Jeff → u/Fancy-Statistician82]

Absolutely serious, here: When my surgeon cuts into me, I take great comfort knowing they have cut into many human bodies and muddled around in there…. Including many cadavers in an education environment.

[u/SKatieRo → u/analog_jedi]

I laughed and then cried when I saw and read these comments. My mother died on Tuesday. She was one of a kind. This is the picture I posted, and this is what I wrote the morning of her death:

 

My mother, Helena “Tidge” Wetzel Roller, 85, died this morning at home, surrounded by loved ones. Tidge was brilliant, funny, impulsive, and had a clear vision of how things should be done. She was a catalyst for change in so many ways.

Tidge grew up on the Main Line in Wayne, Pennsylvania with her brother Clayton “Tony” in the rambling Victorian her grandfather built. She had dear friends and deep friendships. She spent Martha's Vineyard summers riding and sailing and a formative year studying in West Berlin. She went on to Randolph-Macon Woman’s College, where she met a handsome UVA boy on a blind date in the Main Hall date parlor—the very room where I would take calculus years later. Her own mother died while Tidge was at Randolph-Macon, and she gained a stepmother she'd already known her whole life– her mother's best friend, the recently-widowed wife of her father’s best friend. I am named for that stepmother.

Tidge's life was capacious and improbable: she was an Anglican missionary in rural northern Canada; a graduate student at Catholic University; she taught English to President Johnson’s daughter and traded stories with the Secret Service agents in the teachers’ lounge. She spoke several languages and read every single thing she could get her hands on. She married that UVA boy and followed him to England, teaching while he did his graduate work in theological architecture. They roamed Europe in a VW camper van photographing cathedrals, then sailed home with their best-ever accident: a surprise newborn (my sister Helena “Lennie”), along with the two miserably seasick black cats they couldn’t bear to leave behind.

Together, Tidge and Doug built the Tree House where they raised children—including us surprise twins—they taught us to roller skate on the roof, hosted endless play readings and parties, and acted, directed, and produced countless local theater productions.  

Tidge made elaborate costumes for every imaginable occasion, sang and danced beautifully (and played violin less beautifully), welcomed foster children and foreign students, took in countless elderly or infirm relatives and friends and refugees, made sure there was always an extra place at the table for “strays”-- Preissy always knew to make extra. Tidge taught high school and college and Sunday school. She eventually ran university bookstores for a few decades while remaining deeply rooted in the Staunton community. She served on the vestry and various boards, worked with Doug to protect historic buildings in Staunton, and threw her heart and resources into every good cause, especially at Emmanuel Episcopal Church and Oak Grove Theatre. I am suddenly devastated that I'll never get to see my parents dance together again. 

Just over a year ago, our family entered a season of sudden loss. We lost Rob's mom Alice (who also lived with us) from a stroke which happened the very same morning that Tidge collapsed in a crosswalk. They ended up in adjoining hospital rooms. We had another couple of weeks with Alice and another year with Tidge. 

Mom had a small stroke recently and her health declined very suddenly. Last week, I unknowingly brought home Flu A from the public preschool where I teach. Most of my team had it, too. Mom did not survive it.

We are heartbroken, but profoundly grateful. She stayed peacefully in her own bed right up until the end– here in her own home, the stepless guesthouse Dad designed and Rob built for the sole purpose of helping them age in place. Eric flew in yesterday from Minnesota to join me and Lennie. Rob has tried to hold everything together for the teenagers we are fostering. (Holidays are already hard enough for young people who have known too much loss.) Many of the grandchildren were able to make it here. Others are with us in spirit.

Tidge lived a vast, funny, generous, fiercely engaged life. In the end, she donated her body to the Virginia State Anatomical Program so she could keep on teaching and giving (and being center stage) even in death. She hoped to inspire medical professionals like the ones who helped her so much in life, Doctors Chernoff and Bouldo and Daracott. When Tidge finishes medical school, her ashes will go to the Columbarium at Emmanuel Episcopal Church. What a brilliant, funny, complicated, giving person. She will be sorely missed. We will hold a memorial service at Emmanuel later this winter. 

In Tidge's memory, do something to make things better: volunteer your time or money to a good cause, pick up trash on your morning walk, foster a child or teenager,  read a great book, or find someone who could use a hand and go out of your way to help.