The superhuman and compassionate gravediggers of Bushey Jewish Cemetery

“We also help with the coffin, so we are there when the funerals are taking place,” he continued.

Anyone who has lost someone will know that when you are by their grave, you want quiet. You want to hear the birds tweeting and the sound of their voice in your head. What you do not want to hear is the churning engine of an industrial digger, 25 feet away.

Stonemason Lino Teixeira was busy refurbishing the stones[Missing Credit]

This, I found out, is something that the gravediggers are well aware of. “If we see a mourner by a grave, we will pause our work to give them the quiet they need, especially if we are using a noisy machine,” Neil tells me.

This level of respect doesn’t come without its challenges, however. “We cannot stop indefinitely. Usually, we are digging a grave on the day of the funeral, and we must make sure it is ready on time.”

It isn’t long before I am told to jump aboard a digger. There are a lot of levers, one to go up, one to go down, one to go right, one to go left, one to open the bucket, one to close it. It isn’t easy to manoeuvre.

[Missing Credit]I didn't realise it would be such backbreaking work

For the first five minutes of shifting soil, I’m dissociated from the task – it feels like I’m simply digging a hole. Then I realise. This is going to be someone’s final resting place. That feeling stays with me until the hole is dug. I wonder how long someone has to do this job before that eerie sensation goes away.

After the excavation, I’m told to jump down into the grave. Machines, however useful they are, can only get you so far in this line of work. In order to even out the earth, gravediggers have to get inside and pick away at the edges with a pitchfork and a spade.

The law states that graves have to have a depth of 1.3m. Bushey Jewish Cemetery sits on a bed of a hard clay. This isn’t like digging through surface-level mud – it’s more like trying to chisel through concrete.

I manage about five spadefuls before I ask when breaktime is.

I’m told shifts here last for eight hours. These people are superhuman, I think to myself. Thankfully, I’m allowed to stop as I am due to head into Bushey Old Cemetery to meet the stonemason.

Bushey Old is a huge and beautiful expanse of grass, flowers and immaculate tombstones – with a pond teeming with carp.

One of those in charge of keeping the stones in perfect quality is stonemason Lino Teixeira, who has worked at the cemetery for 17 years. “It is so nice to see the thank-you messages from families after we have renovated their loved ones’ stones,” he says. “I enjoy seeing how we bring the stones back to looking at their best.”

The two cemeteries combined, both run by the United Synagogue (US), sit on 150 acres of land and house more than 50,000 graves. Many of those in the Old Cemetery date back to 1947 when the site was opened and a number of my own family’s graves go back to this very time.

I spoke to groundsman Nigel Saunders[Missing Credit]

As the years pass by, layers of black dust build up on the glimmering white marble stones and the lead inscriptions fade and chip away. It is up to Lino to fix all of this.

“Some families we have a contract with. Once a year, we bring their loved one’s stones back to what it first looked like when it was laid. We have a machine to sand down the top layer of marble and we also redo the lettering. Some of the letters fall out in time, so we put them back in.

“Of course, as time goes by, it all gets dirty again, so we clean it all up and jet wash everything. It takes two or three hours, depending on the job.”

Lino tells me that the device used to sand down the marble can only be used when the temperature is above ten degrees celsius – something which can’t be guaranteed in this country. But the the cold has the biggest impact on the staff during the digging itself, as groundsman Nigel Saunders, who has worked at Bushey for seven years, explains.

Walking up into the prayer hall after my shift with Richard Verber, head of communications at the United Synagogue (US)[Missing Credit]

“Winter is the hardest time of the year to work. The ground is frozen, and it doesn’t make a difference if you use the digger or if you do it by hand. It is much harder,” he says.

Nigel – who, like the 19 full-time workers at Bushey Jewish cemeteries, is not Jewish – says that he feels like he is a part of the community.

“We are here to do a job and to respect our guests,” he says.

I make my way back to the maintenance office with some of the staff, and we pass the fish pond. The carp are very lively, swimming up to the surface, opening their mouths up wide as if they are asking for something.

“They’ll be fed soon,” says one of the groundsman.

It is strange how, out of everything I have heard on my day’s experience as a gravedigger, it is this caring comment that will stay with me. 

However impressive the gravediggers’ physical ability is, anyone can get strong if they work at it – maybe even me – but having compassion, something these burly men have in excess, that is something I don’t think one can learn.