ANDREA Delahaye likes the idea that whenever she looks through her backdoor she can see her mother, grandparents, brother, aunt, niece and cousin all nestled together.

The seven white graves, partly shaded by a tamarind tree, lie at the rear of Delahaye’s house in Spring Village, St Catherine.

Delahaye, 41, told the Sunday Observer that carving out a burial plot at her family home held sentimental value for her and her relatives. The decision-makers were not amenable to the idea of burial in a public cemetery. In fact, Delahaye insisted that the memory of the deceased would be diminished in a maze of hundreds of other graves.

“I just wanted them to be at home,” the soft-spoken Delahaye said. Her mom, who succumbed to diabetic complications in 2003, was the last person buried in the plot, and nearness of the grave – which has a headstone – accentuates the good memories.

“You have the grave there, and you can just go and sit down on it. You can imagine the person there and it just kinda lift yu spirit,” Delahaye said.

Similarly, when Delahaye’s niece perished in a car crash about 12 years ago, the family’s decision to inter her body in the backyard was rooted in a desire to “dim the loss” experienced by her late niece’s three children.

“The children carry flowers on Mother’s Day, or when it is her birthday. If the grave was in a cemetery, maybe you wouldn’t find it. We sweep them [all seven graves] off, and mostly at Christmas time we paint them,” she said.

High costs, she said, also played a role in the family’s decision not to use a public cemetery.

“To pay for a spot, it is too expensive. There is a cost to go to Meadowrest or Dovecot,” she told the Sunday Observer during a visit to the family home.

But the St Catherine Parish Council has been trying to get residents, particularly those in rural communities, to desist from burying their loved ones at home.

Noting that she was unaware that backyard burials can possibly contaminate the underground water supply, Delahaye maintained that she would not stop the practice unless legally bound to do so. Besides, she said if graves in her community are compromised, they would not pose a threat to the water table there.

Delahaye’s belief highlights an issue which has taken on renewed importance in the public domain: shedding a tradition which can conflict with the public health code. It also raises questions about the adequacy of the authorities’ efforts to regulate burials on private property.

Mayor Andrew Wheatley told the Sunday Observer that in recent years his council and the St Catherine Health Department had embarked on an effort to sensitise people about the relationship between unchecked backyard burials and contamination of underground water. This move, he said, had significantly reduced the practice in the parish.

As a result, he said, additional demands have been created on public cemeteries in the parish, contributing to a shortage of spaces.

But Samuel Cameron, chief public health inspector at the St Catherine Health Department, admitted that although people were prohibited from burying within the town limit, or where the water table is high, policing all burials on family plots would prove difficult because of the size of the parish.

“Some people will bury without the health department knowing,” Cameron said. In addition, he pointed out that because places such as Old Harbour, Portmore, Spanish Town, Linstead and sections of Ewarton had a high water table, the department would have to determine how many wells were located in the vicinity of the proposed burial site, before approval could be granted to people who desire to bury at home.

“An assessment would have to be made if it [desired burial space] falls in the town limit, or if it falls anywhere where there’s a high water table. There’s a map we have available from the Underground Water Authority, so we’ll know the wells in that particular locale,” Cameron said.

The health department can exhume a body buried at a site that is considered unsuitable for that activity, Cameron said, adding that the issue of backyard burials is raised with councillors, who should be aware of all burials taking place in their constituencies.

Over in McCook’s Pen in the parish, construction worker Ezeikel Darby told the Sunday Observer that it was possible a member of his family had received approval from the St Catherine Parish Council to bury his son and nephew – both murdered in 2003 – at home. The unpainted graves, which sit alongside those of Darby’s sister-in-law and mother, had a few small slabs of concrete which had collapsed at the side, a problem which Darby said can be easily repaired.

Relating that more burials in that vicinity may spoil the decor of his house – which is just a stone’s throw away from his doorway – Darby, 66, noted that he would have continued burying on his property if he had bigger land space. However, he admitted that the choice of burial spot was primarily determined by economics.

“You can do the tombing all two to fours years after, depending on when you can afford to do it. At the cemetery, you can’t get that,” Darby said.

A few houses away, the clothes hanging on the line fluttered in a breeze which fanned the blades of grass surrounding four graves at the back of Claude Hinds’ home. The weather-beaten graves were a few metres from the house, with the lone one, that of Hinds’ uncle, bearing a headstone with shards of broken tiles. Hinds’ grandfather, who passed on in 1989, was the original owner of the land. He too is buried there.

“They [relatives] saw it fit to put him there. They are planning to put names on them [all the graves], and upgrade them,” Hinds said. Parallel to these two graves are those of a cousin and aunt. Hinds, who noted that the “family tradition” of burying loved ones in the backyard had been started by “the more senior members”, acknowledged that the activity could depreciate the land – something he wouldn’t want to happen. “When you bury on the land, it get cheaper,” Hinds said.

The scene was no different in Rosewell, Clarendon, where children frolicked among rough-hewn, unpainted graves, while adults, letting out loud guffaws, perched on others. In fact, Rosewell, a largely farming district near Bodles in the parish, shows a community steeped in backyard burial. Inside a number of yards, multiple graves, many of them painted white, form an integral part of the landscape.

“Right now, when my mom die I’m not going to take her to any cemetery,” 59-year-old Isme Thomas, who appears wedded to the practice, told the Sunday Observer.

“Her grandmom, her aunt, her grandfather and her children bury down here. It’s just a tradition, we don’t have anybody who go to a cemetery,” said Thomas, a chicken and goat farmer.

Thomas’ husband, who died in January 2006 from a heart attack, is buried at the back of the family house, where his father’s remains are laid to rest. Burying her husband in a public cemetery would have cost more money, and the funds would have to be immediately identified to put on the headstone, which Thomas and her children view as mark of respect. But the ease of accessibility to the grave at a later date, Thomas explained, meant the family could choose their own timing when to place the headstones.

Winston Smith, the cheery 51-year-old president of Rosewell Citizens’ Association, agreed. Smith’s cousin died of a heart attack and was buried in January this year among a cluster of other graves, on a plot opposite the house reserved for burials in the family. In July of last year, Smith’s aunt, whose life was also claimed by a heart attack, was buried there too. Making of this plot was underpinned by a credo that Smith’s relatives passed to him: a parcel of the land must be set aside for family burials.

“A plot of land must be reserved for the family because maybe people from abroad want to come and visit the tomb. It’s easy access, you can easily find the grave, because when you bury a cemetery, you can hardly find the tomb them yuh nuh,” Smith said. Highlighting his role as a custodian of the graves, Smith added: “Is me upkeep the graves, clean it up and so.”

In this community, there seems to be no knowledge of the regulatory reach of the parish council on the matter of backyard burials, though Clarendon’s mayor, Milton Brown, states that his council had been using citizens’ association meetings as part of an educational forum on the issue.

“Every council attends about four to six citizens’ association meetings per month. That’s the main avenue of communication that we have been using,” Brown said.

Cameron’s counterpart in the parish, Vernal Webster, told the Sunday Observer that more residents were acting on the knowledge that parish council approval should be sought. He said the health department in the parish receives about four or five applications per week for burials on private plots, noting that 50 per cent of the applications for family plot burials were made by people whose neighbours had objected to the activity in those areas. Like Cameron, Webster noted that sometimes these kinds of burials take place without the health department and parish council being notified, admitting that a greater effort is required to broaden awareness of how unregulated backyard burials can compromise the water table and devalue the land.

“I think it is a worthwhile issue to take on board, through our parent teachers’ associations and support groups …A parent is somebody who could say to a neighbour, ‘Look, I am advised that when a burial is going to take place, you need to make an application to the council’. A lot of people don’t know that,” Webster said.