After a century, the world below ground is quiet.
A cheap pine coffin is long gone.
Collapsed into the soil, its wood rotted away, a metal one is a corroded shell.
The flesh has been gone for decades, returned to the earth by bacteria and time, leaving only the skeleton behind–Even the bones are slowly turning to dust.
Above ground, the stone tells the story of the weather. Granite stands firm, but marble weeps its inscriptions away under the slow assault of rain.
The ground sinks.
As the world below gives way.
But in America, the plot itself is a permanent thing.
The family bought the right to that spot forever–No one is coming to dig up the bones to make room for someone new, that is a story from other places.