In the Garden of Gethsemane in Valhalla Memory Gardens, Steve Snyder leans on his freshly sharpened spade as Robert and Rebecca Ayers approach him. The Ayers ask Snyder to show them the burial plots they purchased earlier that morning. \nAs Snyder leads the Ayers to their eventual resting place, they follow him in a slow, cautious stroll, as if they are afraid of Snyder and what he will show them. \n"Here you go," Synder said, pointing with his spade to the ground. "These are yours."\nThe Ayers look at the ground -- their future home -- with moderate disappointment. \n"This is the closest we could get to our son," said Robert Ayers, a Bloomington resident.\nTheir son, Kendall, died last fall when he was 50. He is 20 yards away from his parents, but from where his parents stand, it seems like a mile. \nBefore leaving, the Ayers visit their son. His site stands out from the others. His tombstone hasn't arrived and sod hasn't been planted over the blanket of soft dirt above him, making his death seem more noticeable than the others. A single yellow rose lies above him. \n"Do you think you could lay some grass over him soon?" Robert Ayers asked.\nAfter easing the Ayers' sadness by assuring them that sod will be planted over their son's grave, Snyder begins a day of work.
A born gravedigger\nComforting grieving individuals is nothing new for Snyder, the head gravedigger at Valhalla Memory Gardens, 310 N. Johnson Ave., located a few miles west of IU. For 27 years, Snyder's office has been a graveyard and his company car, a backhoe. Snyder, 43, estimated he has buried about 3,000 bodies. Since he was 16, he has seen things that would send most people running in fear.\n"I've seen some pretty nasty stuff in my time," Snyder said. "Stuff that would turn your skin so white you'd look like you were dead."\nHe has a job many people would be scared or depressed to approach, but he said he loves it because he helps provide closure to mourners. But the work isn't always pleasant, such as when Snyder has had to unearth decomposing bodies in order to relocate them.\nBefore Snyder, a Kokomo native, settled in at Valhalla, he worked for a construction company, building mausoleums for 10 years in cemeteries across the country -- from Indiana to California. \nBut the death of his father sent Snyder back to Bloomington. Tired of the constant travel and difficult labor of his old job, Snyder opted to stay in Bloomington and to follow the path of his father, who was once the superintendent at Valhalla. Since his return, Snyder has been serving and comforting Bloomington grievers for the past decade.\n "When I was building mausoleums, I never knew where I was going to live from one job to the next," Snyder said. "Working at Valhalla has been great because I finally feel like I'm at home, and it gives me a chance to make a stronger bond with the community."\n Every day Snyder shows up for work at 8 a.m., but a dump truck with a flat tire prevents him from getting an early start on a chilly November morning. While the tire is repaired, Snyder takes Ryan Tharp, a co-worker, out to breakfast at a local diner. \n"It's on me today," Snyder said, holding a small stack of lottery tickets -- one is a $20 winner. Snyder said grave digging doesn't pay a lot of money -- in fact, he makes $10.20 an hour, and works at least 40 hours a week. Instead of complaining, he scratches lottery tickets. \n"I'm not gonna get rich working here," he said with a laugh. "So I got to play the lottery."\nThe silence of a cemetery and the sea of engraved granite don't dampen Snyder's mood during work. His high spirits and contagious smile reflect his unyielding enthusiasm. \nTharp, a grounds crewman at Valhalla, said Snyder's sense of humor and energy distract him from the cemetery's gloomy atmosphere, helping him enjoy his job more.\n"I think it'd be kind of easy to let a place like a cemetery give you the creeps," Tharp said. "But when you work with somebody like Steve, you never pay attention to that kind of stuff because he always keeps the job fun."
Preparing the final resting place\nWith their stomachs full from a warm breakfast, Snyder and Tharp are back at the cemetery and ready to dig. Before anything, Snyder thoroughly cleans his spade and hones it to a sharp point. Precision in his work is always evident. \nAs Snyder makes his way to the Garden of Devotion, another section of Valhalla, he gazes over the rows of death and is quick to recite the histories of some of the names on the tombstones. These names are important to Snyder. Some are names he has buried; others are names he maintains. But Snyder said he feels responsible for all of the names. \nSnyder and Tharp meet up at the headstone of Louise Mobley, who has rested in the Garden of Devotion for two years. In two days, her husband Frank will rest by her side. With a tape measure, Snyder outlines a rectangle that is eight feet long and 40 inches wide -- lot 151 B, space one.\nSnyder then divides the sod into nine small strips and begins shaving them from the earth. His compact, stout build helps him pierce through the rooted grass as if it were butter. After the grass is severed from the ground, an ominous, brown rectangle appears.\n"(Cutting the sod) is really the hardest part of digging the grave," Snyder said. "Once this is done, the machines do the rest of the work for us."\nSitting in the backhoe, Snyder empties 55 inches of dirt -- two full loads in the dump truck -- from Mobley's grave. Without any help, Snyder carves the perfect hole: even depth, flush sides and perfect angles. It looks as though a coffin could slide right in.\n"Watching him dig, he makes it look so easy that you think anybody could do it," Tharp said. "But it's a lot harder than it looks. I've never seen anybody who can make the floor and walls as flat and straight as he does."
Revisiting the dead\nWhile digging a grave is usually the easiest part of the job, Snyder said his work becomes a whole new ballgame when he has to redig a gravesite.\n"I can remember this time when this mom and dad asked us to redig their daughter's coffin and take out the necklace that she held in her hand," Snyder said. "At the time we did this, she had been dead for about 12 years, so it wasn't a pretty sight. The body looked like something from a movie: The eyes were sunken in the back of her head, and her skin was drawn back to where her teeth and gums were really exposed. It looked like the body just kind of dripped off the bones."\nBut not all bodies are buried. Some people wish to have their bodies placed in a mausoleum, an aboveground vault. Although no digging has to be done for these bodies, Snyder said situations inside a mausoleum are often worse. \n"When we have to move caskets, I've had to go into the tombs with crowbars or breaker bars to tear the casket apart, and then I'd have to carry this body and put it in a new place. The bodies in the mausoleum have a tendency to dry out more than buried bodies, and I've seen faces of bodies where it looked like somebody covered them with glue and then poured a bag of corn flakes over them. I've seen plenty of guys get sick over the sight, and the smell … well, let's just say you don't want no Egg McMuffin afterwards."
Laid to rest\nOnce the sod is stripped, the grave is dug and the funeral is over, Snyder puts the finishing touches on the gravesite. He fills the rest of the hole with sand and dirt and then replants sod over the grave. \n"When I get done, you can't tell that anybody's been buried," Snyder said. "That's what I shoot for -- that's closure."\nAfter 10 years on the job, Snyder said he has grown immune to the sights and smell of decaying bodies, but the sights and sounds of mourners still make him uneasy.\n"Sometimes when I see people cry, I just want to start crying with them," Snyder said. "But I try to not let it affect me because I've got a job to do, and people are counting on me."\nBut Snyder said a family's reaction to a funeral is not always the depressing picture most people associate with funerals.\n"Every family grieves in a different way," he said. "I've seen funerals where people climb on top of the casket because they don't want them to go, and I've seen some where the family breaks out a bottle of champagne and starts celebrating."\nWhen the person being buried is a personal friend or family member of Snyder's, he insists on being the man in charge, so he can be sure the funeral will run as smoothly as possible. But Snyder said he doesn't give preferential treatment to anyone. He digs each grave like it is for a friend.\n"I don't care who you are," Snyder said. "Whether you're a billionaire or haven't got a dime in your pocket, I give everybody the same treatment and service."\nWhile a cemetery can be a sad and uncomforting sight for many people, Snyder said one of his favorite parts of the job is the tranquility that surrounds his workplace. \nThe evening after Frank Mobley's funeral, Snyder's description of a serene cemetery is evident, as two deer run through the Garden of Devotion and into the nearby woods. Surrounding the Mobley's gravesites are seven pots of flowers, and in the middle, between the two mounds of replanted sod, rests a single yellow rose.\nWhen he isn't helping people at work, Snyder, who lives in Bloomington, said he enjoys fishing, mushroom hunting and spending time with his girlfriend Jessie and his two sons, Craig, 19, and Stevie, 17. \nWith no specific plans for his own funeral, Snyder said he guesses he will be buried in Valhalla. But until he has to make that decision, he said he will enjoy his life and his job.\n"I'll work here until I die," Snyder said.
