Copyright chicagoreader
Rosehill’s gothic entrance gate off Ravenswood Avenue casts a puzzle-piece shadow onto the pavement and grass. The sky is all blue, and the sun is already too hot on this late July morning. Looking west into the cemetery, there’s a line of maple trees, a verdigris statue of someone named Charles J. Hull, and headstones. Lots of headstones. I walk toward the main office. A simple, white logo on its door reads “Dignity Memorial.” Inside, I’m greeted by a woman I later learn is Sara De La O, one of Rosehill’s four groundskeepers. She’s about five feet tall, with a square jaw, sharp brown eyes, and thick black hair. She smiles when I tell her I’m here to follow Rosehill’s grounds crew for the day, then disappears through a door behind the front desk. I pick up a visitor’s map. Looking at it, I realize just how big Rosehill is. It’s shaped a bit like Nevada: an uneven hexagon with an angled jut for its southern boundary. At 350 acres, it’s the largest (and oldest) cemetery in Chicago, bordered by about six neighborhoods and nearly the size of one itself. The map is dotted with the final resting places of notable Chicagoans. People like Julius Rosenwald, founder of the Museum of Science and Industry, and Charles G. Dawes, vice president to Calvin Coolidge. John G. Shedd, Aaron Montgomery Ward, and Richard W. Sears are all interred inside architect Sidney Lovell’s historic mausoleum. Rosehill is also home to eponyms I never knew were eponyms, like Ignaz Schwinn of Schwinn Bicycle Company and Norman Harris of BMO Harris. Finally, there’s a smattering of semi-notable Chicagoland mayors, civil war generals, publishers, actors, religious leaders, gangsters, horticulturists, bankers, and athletes buried throughout. Rosehill is a six-by-six-block composite of Chicago history. But Rosehill isn’t just a historical site. It’s an active graveyard. That’s part of what makes it—or any cemetery, really—so fascinating. It’s a threshold where people transition from loved ones to memories to monuments. And because Rosehill is both large and old, you can see that interaction in real time: burial services next to headstones so weathered they’re no longer legible. I hear the office door open. A man wearing a black hat and a blue polo enters. A patch on the left side of his chest bears the same Dignity Memorial logo. A patch on the right tells me his name is Dominic. He beckons me forward with his two-way radio, and I follow Rosehill superintendent Dominic Reyes out of the building and to the cab of a Dignity-branded Ford F-250. He turns the ignition and tells me there’s much to see. Reyes starts us down an arcing road. Again, Rosehill’s size is made obvious. We drive past the large mausoleum complex, the gardens, and the ponds. We drive past obelisks that stand stories tall, crypts with bronze doors, and memorials with crosses and crescents and flowers. We drive past rows of centuries-old markers that lie flat and flush with the grass, none more unique than the last. Somehow, every headstone is profound. We finally park along the road before meeting another groundskeeper, Jose Sanchez. “He’s kind of reserved,” Reyes tells me of Sanchez, “but he knows a lot of shit.” Rosehill is organized, from largest to smallest, by sections, then lots, then sublots, then graves. On this hot July morning, we’re at a grave in section 121—a shadeless crop across from the cemetery’s large Neo-Grec mausoleum complex. Here, Sanchez taps his shovel near where the grass meets the road. Sanchez is about five feet, seven inches tall and in his mid-50s. He wears the same thing all groundskeepers wear: a navy blue Dignity baseball cap, a light blue button-up, and navy blue slacks. Sanchez’s mildly unkempt beard creeps onto his cheekbones and neck beyond his blue surgical mask. I’ve never seen his nose. Reyes and I quietly watch Sanchez tap. Occasionally, Reyes whispers an aside, for texture or context. The first step to digging a grave, Reyes tells me, is making certain you’ve found it. That means finding the correct lot pin. The numbered metal skewer-meets-disk looks a bit like an oversize meat thermometer (an image I strain not to think about, given the context). At Rosehill, these lot pins are centuries old, meaning they’re often overgrown with dirt and grass and have shifted after decades of rainfall, snowfall, and frost heaves. The ground, like the ocean, swells and drifts. Sanchez taps until we hear a clink. He shovels away a square of earth and exhumes the lot pin. Reyes tells me he recently bought the grounds team new shovels, but Sanchez turned down the offer, opting instead for his old, all-steel shovel. He prefers it; it’s more precise. “It’s important,” Sanchez says, “because we’re trying to do it perfect and not make mistakes. We have to do right for the family.” After he finds the lot pin, Sanchez measures the grave and outlines it with small, red flags. While he works, he tells me he’s been at the cemetery since 1994. Given that Rosehill averages about 460 burials per year, it’s not an exaggeration to say that Sanchez has measured thousands of graves, perhaps even tens of thousands. The economy of his measurements makes this apparent. After marking the grave, Sanchez picks up a drill that’s been hiding in the grass. The drill bit is nearly as long as Sanchez is tall. Starting with his hands at his head, he bores into the ground to check for debris, like rocks or pipes, that might impede the backhoe. He steps to the right and probes again. He does this again and again around the grave. When he finishes, he places green and yellow flags in the center of the grave. Good to dig. The whole process takes about 20 minutes. Much of the tedium involves double- and triple-checking that everything is correct. As I’m told repeatedly throughout the day: You only get one shot. I ask Sanchez if the job is hard. He takes a beat and waggles his head. “Sometimes,” he finally says. “Winter is hard—hard ground, lots of snow—or when it’s raining.” With gravedigging, the job changes with the terrain and the environment—and environment is a term that can be applied to both natural elements and the broader end-of-life industry. Consider that, two decades ago, 11 Rosehill groundskeepers performed even more tasks than they do now, including mowing, weeding, pruning, and general landscaping and ground maintenance. Now, most of that work is contracted out to landscaping companies, and the four full-time groundskeepers have three main tasks: measuring, digging, and interring. The grounds, literally and metaphorically, have been slowly shifting beneath them. The sole item of note in Michael Weidman’s office is the noirish black fedora resting on the back of the door. Weidman is Rosehill’s director of family services, and he looks the part. He’s tall, pale, and garbed in black. He wears a pocket watch. He even drives a handsome, glossy-black 1953 Buick. Weidman is Rosehill’s de facto historian. During our conversation, he tells me that Rosehill predates the light bulb by 20 years, the telephone by 17 years, and the typewriter by a dozen. “We represent the 19th century, the 20th century, and the 21st century,” says Weidman. “But it’s not just a tourist destination. This is a cemetery that exists to respectfully take care of the dead and to give comfort to their families.” That’s one of the most charming aspects of Rosehill. It’s both an active site of grief and historical curiosity. For instance, a few summers ago, a class of students visited Chicago from Germany, and Rosehill was one of their destinations. Why? To see the grave of Oscar Mayer. I imagine those students enjoying their tour while a burial happens somewhere nearby, Sanchez somewhere measuring. Weidman is sure to mention that Rosehill, like Chicago, is a city of neighborhoods. “It’s very organic. They just happen, like Chicago neighborhoods just happen,” he says. In Rosehill, these sections can be loosely divided into, among others, Greek, Romanian, Jewish, Latine, Chinese, Japanese, Muslim, Christian, and nondenominational. Weidman speculates that’s mostly because people want to be buried with the people they spent time with in life. Religious congregations sometimes purchase plots—sometimes whole sections of the cemetery—for later use. On this day, the sole burial service is in a Muslim section, where all the graves face northeast toward Mecca. But for the most part, Rosehill is, and has always been, nonsectarian. Over the years, groundskeepers have performed more than 193,000 traditional burials with room for many, many more. Nevertheless, things have been changing. Since the pandemic, the percentage of people opting for cremations has surged nationwide. Some counties in Florida and Washington have seen cremation rates upwards of 90 percent. At both Rosehill and in Chicago as a whole, cremations are on pace with traditional burials. “Just before COVID, we were seeing about 25 percent cremation. Today we’re right at 50 percent,” says Steve Mize, Rosehill’s general manager. He’s dressed in a suit and has a number four buzz cut, large hands, and a gravely midland accent that makes me remember Illinois shares a border with Kentucky. He continues, “Probably the biggest [cremation] challenge we’re faced with is . . . families don’t know what options they have. We all hear the stories [about how] grandma’s ended up in a closet somewhere because they didn’t know what they could do with grandma.” Cremation began to gain popularity in the U.S. during the 1980s. Since then, the rate of people opting for cremation over burial has only increased. Journalists and academics have posed a broad and rich selection of reasons, like changing cultural values, religious and practical flexibilities, and environmental concerns. But anecdotally, the most common answer is cost. “The ossuary is a communal resting place. It’s a one-way trip to a communal vault with other cremated remains,” says Weidman. “And when you go in, you never come out. That’s $295.” Compare that to the starting price for a gravesite—$4,795, which doesn’t include things like the price of the casket, body preparation, funeral service, or headstone—and it starts to make sense. Why should someone choose burial over cremation? To a growing number of people, traditional burials seem antiquated, especially as many religious institutions—including the Catholic Church—have begun to accept cremation and cremation burials as viable alternatives. But with new trends and changing values, other problems sprout. As Mize points out, relatives often end up on mantels, in closets, and in basements. When generations of cremains begin to accumulate, the question isn’t just “What do we do with grandma?” but also “What do we do with the great-great grandma no one alive has ever known?” The John Deere 710L backhoe is a baroque, yellow monster that rips up earth with ease. Julio Vargas, seated in the beast’s belly, jerks the joysticks. As Vargas operates, Steve Schmidt stands on thin, 1.5-by-six-foot wooden planks that outline the soon-to-be grave. By late morning, the sun is piercing and mean. Everyone is sweating. Vargas is tan and clean-shaven, with close eyes and a gray cul-de-sac of hair that wraps his head. He first started at Rosehill in 2000 as a janitor in the mausoleum complex. After a few years as a seasonal employee, Vargas began working outside. Eventually, a coworker asked if he wanted to help with a funeral. “I didn’t want to help with the funeral, but . . . I wanted to learn how to operate the tractor,” he says. Twenty years in, Vargas does nearly all the mechanical digging, and it’s easy to see why. He directs the machine with the rhythm, intensity, and precision of an orchestra conductor. Vargas is candid, smart, and has a rich sense of humor—not gallows humor, but something close to it. “People always ask me, ‘Are you scared?’” he says. “No. The way you do something on your phone is like me in the tractor.” The grounds crew’s work is a balance between quotidian and tragic. Reyes buried an infant on his first day at Rosehill. “It was terrible,” he says. “I was like, ‘Is this what I’m getting into? Will I be able to handle it?’” But as time went on, it got easier. He avows that you don’t need to be a special type of person to work in cemeteries. It just takes some getting used to is all, and some type of faith. That doesn’t mean groundskeepers are impenetrable or anesthetized. There are always those days that bite. When funeral mourners weep, their emotional response can evoke the same in the groundskeepers. Nearly universally, the groundskeepers find burials of infants and children distressing. Vargas tells me about a recent funeral for a young man the same age as his son. “It’s scary,” he recalls, “but life is that way.” Vargas tells me that Schmidt has a son the same age; Schmidt stayed away. The deeper the hole, the less Vargas can see. But Schmidt, a weather-beaten blonde with a freckle-pink face and an orange beard, has a way of communicating with thumbs and open palms that describe the exact movements the backhoe should make. The machine rips up earth, mostly clay and gravel, and heaps it into the bed of another Dignity-branded truck, which begins to sag under the weight. All the while, Vargas sings and Schmidt jokes. It’s not unnatural or forced, like they’re trying to counteract the emotional weight of it all. Rather, it’s entirely normal. “You get to the point where it’s numb, but you still have feelings for the family. You want to make everything just right for them,” says Schmidt. In conversation, it doesn’t seem like Schmidt’s use of “numb” is callous or impersonal. It evokes a sense of emotional integrity. Schmidt’s been at Rosehill for just three years, which makes him the cemetery’s shortest tenured groundskeeper, but his experience at Rosehill goes back decades. Schmidt grew up across the street. He tells me he learned to drive on Rosehill’s roads, how to fish in its ponds, and has family members interred in its grounds. “I have pride in this place,” he says. “It’s just nice to be here, take care of my family’s graves and other people’s graves.” Schmidt, along with all the other groundskeepers, is sure to tell me how valuable, impactful, and enjoyable the work is. “Sometimes the elements are bad. But this is my office. It’s better than being in a cubicle,” he says. As Vargas digs, I catch glimpses of the soil-blackened vault—the large concrete box that holds the coffin—of a neighbor to the right. Schmidt makes Vargas aware with an arcane pointer-meets-palm motion, and Vargas proceeds with caution as he claws out tight corners of the grave, so the vault can rest easily. Vargas pats down the dirt with the claw, and the hole’s dug. The final step is getting the vault into the grave. De La O and Schmidt attach chains to anchors inside the concrete bin and the back of the backhoe’s claw. Vargas lifts the vault over the grave while De La O and Schmidt negotiate the angles. Vargas lowers it into the earth, and Schmidt removes the chains from the anchors. Vargas returns the bucket to the earth before turning off the engine and stepping out of the cab. We all can speak a bit quieter now. “People always say ‘six feet,’” jokes Schmidt, lowering his shovel into the grave. It’s the depth of the grave, from blade to handle. He pulls it out and holds it next to his body for scale. Schmidt looks to be at least six feet tall, and the shovel barely reaches the bottom of his ears. Safe to say the hole is, at most, five and a half feet. Service Corporation International (SCI) is a name that tells you nothing. And yet, it is the nation’s largest death-care provider. According to Christopher James, SCI’s external communications specialist, SCI currently owns 1,485 funeral service locations and 498 cemeteries. It employs roughly 24,000 people and trades on the New York Stock Exchange at $83.86 per share at the time of writing, which is the highest its stock price has been since SCI’s inception. Suffice to say, death has proven a lucrative undertaking for SCI, but you wouldn’t know it, because SCI’s cemeteries, funeral homes, crematoriums, and related enterprises typically operate under a melange of names. To make matters more confusing, these businesses are typically nested within 13 subsidiaries, with names like Funeraria del Angel, Neptune Society, National Cremation, LHT Consulting Group, Dignity Memorial, Dignité (in Quebec), and Dignity Memorial Premier Collection. Ostensibly, these brands offer different services, but to the common observer, the benefit is the guise of independent local businesses. Without a bit of digging, you’d never know that SCI has captured roughly 17 percent of the North American death-care industry. In the greater Chicago area, SCI owns 36 properties, including Rosehill, which it purchased in January 1991. From the 90s through the 2010s, SCI was the subject of antitrust scrutiny. In 1994, the company faced federal antitrust charges over its acquisition of LaGrone Funeral Chapel and Crematory in Roswell, New Mexico. In 2006, SCI merged with Alderwoods Group, its largest competitor, for $1.23 billion. The Federal Trade Commission initially blocked the merger, but SCI agreed to divest locations in other markets, and the FTC allowed the merger to proceed. In 2013, SCI purchased Stewart Enterprises, which was, again, its largest competitor, for $1.4 billion; the FTC likewise forced SCI to sell 91 businesses before allowing the merger to take place. SCI plays all sides of a rapidly changing death-care industry. It owns so many types of businesses—cemeteries, crematories, funeral homes, even the businesses that produce the products necessary for burials and cremations—that from an operational perspective, it doesn’t much matter how Rosehill’s, Chicago’s, Illinois’s, or even the country’s end-of-life practices change. Consider that SCI’s gross profit hovered at around $1.1 billion in 2023 and 2024, with 2025 projected to be even more lucrative. As long as people die, SCI stands to make money. So, it’s not the corporation that will be most affected by the cremation versus burial dilemma driving major changes in the death-care industry, but rather the people working at the ground level of SCI’s operation. If the industry changes enough, and the number of traditional burials continues to trend downward, it’s easy to speculate that SCI could look to downsize. While it seems like the job of cemetery groundskeeper will never go away entirely—I’ve been assured that people will always want to be buried—the number of groundskeepers could be (and has already been) drastically reduced. Roughly two months after my first day with the groundskeepers, I visit Rosehill again. This morning, like the last, is humid and sunny, though a bit cooler now that fall has begun. I walk toward a small green tent where about 15 chairs have been set up for a funeral service for cremated remains. About one-third of Americans who opt for cremation prefer their ashes be buried, according to the National Funeral Directors Association. At Rosehill, Sara De La O handles these interments. De La O stands with her arm on a small lowering device. The rectangular, synthetic-strapped device does what its name suggests: it lowers caskets into a grave. The one next to her is small; it’s designed for urns and infant caskets. My eyes are drawn to the Dignity logo—on her hat, on her shirt, and on the trucks. Standing in front of the small hole, De La O explains that urns come in various shapes, sizes, and materials. Unlike caskets, urns are not so beholden to surface area, volume, weight, and biohazard limitations. For today’s funeral, De La O has already dug a hole about 18 inches deep—just large enough for a boxy urn. De La O has worked at Rosehill for nearly two decades. She also claims, proudly, to be one of only two women groundskeepers in all of SCI. In her earlier years, she often worked upwards of 80 hours per week, divided between Rosehill and a Subway sandwich store, to afford a life in Chicago with her son. Throughout her tenure, De La O has become the go-to for cremation burials. She also handles funerals for babies and infants, which involve roughly the same physical effort as cremation burials, but are far more emotionally taxing. As we wait for the mourners, our conversation naturally drifts to mortality and afterlife plans. De La O tells me she’d like to be cremated and buried—but not at Rosehill. “This is not cheap. Maybe $16,000,” she says, gesturing to the open ground. While cremation burials are still typically cheaper than traditional burials, funeral costs still mount: the service, grave, urn, etc. These burials still amount to thousands of dollars, especially in Rosehill’s older, more historic sections. Even if an urn takes up less space than a casket, a plot’s still a plot (although you can typically fit at least two urns per). So, why would someone bury an urn? “It’s always good to have an end spot for cremated remains, because you don’t want them to end up in a closet,” says Katie Sullivan Frideres, vice president of the Cremation Society of Illinois. Like Rosehill, she says the Cremation Society has seen an increased demand for cremations since the COVID-19 pandemic. For death-care professionals, the ashes-in-the-closet problem is seemingly ubiquitous. One way Rosehill is responding to the changing deathscape is by offering options on top of options. “We’re doing pedestals. We’re doing glass-front niches. We’re doing benches, where the cremations go inside the bench,” says Steve Mize, the general manager. “I’ve got plenty of cremation options here. I need more.” As I watch the funeral, the importance of cemeteries—especially for cremated remains—becomes obvious. A home (or a closet within) is a space designated for the living, where the dead can be forgotten, lost among files and boxes and photographs. The cemetery gives the dead some existential weight. It’s a place for closure, reflection, and, yes, dignity. After the funeral, De La O lays a wet, reddish patch of dirt over the urn. She packs it tight with her boots and places a square of grass over top. I realize there’s already a headstone. The final year reads 1982. I think, again, about boxes in closets. In the late afternoon heat, we—Reyes, De La O, Sanchez, Vargas, Schmidt, and I—find reprieve from the July sun under a gum tree near an open grave in a predominantly Muslim section of Rosehill. As mourners arrive, they’re greeted by an imam, who, like many of the funeralgoers, wears a kufi and flowing attire. The imam greets Reyes and the rest of the groundskeepers with familiarity; after years of working together, they know each other well. A Dignity-branded truck is parked about 30 feet away, a large pile of earth waiting in its bed. The grave is framed by wooden planks. Once all the attendees arrive, about 40 in total, the procession begins, and the groundskeepers get to work. They place the body, wrapped in a white shroud, on the straps of the lowering device. After a few moments, Vargas and De La O drop it into the grave and remove the contraption. Some male mourners and the imam step into the hole in the earth. The imam recites a prayer. Vargas ignites the backhoe and lifts the concrete vault lid. The backhoe pops and whines. As Schmidt backs the truck toward the grave, swerving past headstones, the mound of dirt jostles in its bed. Schmidt raises its bed, and the mound quietly cracks in two, both halves falling into the grave. Vargas removes the wooden planks. Sanchez fixes the dirt with his shovel. The quartet returns to the gum tree. As Sanchez touches the tree’s bark, he recalls boring holes into the cemetery’s hundreds of trees some 15 years earlier to check for invasive Asian long-horned beetles. Further away, some mourners pray, while others cry or embrace. Vargas and De La O discuss the different names—sincuya, soncuya—for annona purpurea, a fruit native to Central and parts of South America. Vargas says it’s delicious when cooked in oil. De La O agrees. Mourners leave flowers of orange, red, pink, and white on the grave. The groundskeepers turn to another fruit, sapote. “Muy rico,” says Vargas. The others nod in approval. Clusters of mourners disperse, each toward a different car, in a long line that snakes the road. One of them tips the groundskeepers. The workday is over. As Reyes drives me back toward the main entrance, he explains that there’s still more to do. Tomorrow, the groundskeepers will return to flatten the earth and cover the grave with sod. In the weeks after, they’ll place a headstone. And even after that, there’s always maintenance and upkeep. Watching the headstones float past beyond the window, I realize graves aren’t just markers of people who’ve passed. They’re also memorials to 166 years of Rosehill’s groundskeepers—the people who make sure everybody, and every body, is treated with care.
