Calvary might be a place to rest in peace, but not in quiet. This video doesn’t quite do justice to the overwhelmingly droning, drowning volume of noise that rains down on the grounds of Fourth Calvary from traffic on the Long Island Expressway. The Brooklyn-Queens Expressway cuts through another portion of the grounds, separating 2nd Calvary and 3rd Calvary, generating just as much noise as this. One would imagine that burial services performed here might require megaphones or public address speakers for anyone who needed to be heard.

Funny, while typing this a spam e-mail arrives with subject line “Low cost burial and cremation services”.

Calvary still has space but if you want to be buried there you better die soon. According to numerous sources the cemetery only accepts new burials on an as needed basis.

Then again this could be an example of an inaccuracy making the rounds as truth after appearing on an allegedly reliable resource. I find nothing on Calvary’s official web site to suggest that this is the policy. Quite the opposite, according to the “Pre-Need Cemetery Planning” page at calvarycemeteryqueens.com:

Those with responsibility for Catholic cemeteries uniformly encourage all families to consider the purchase of grave, crypt or niche spaces well in advance of need.

Clicking around that web site reveals something about which I did not know. The cemetery built a columbarium for inurnment (that’s a new word on me) of cremains. The “Garden of the Holy Family Columbarium” opened for business last year at Laurel Hill Boulevard and 49th Street. I’ll have to go check that out. I don’t get to New Calvary as much as Old.

I believe this is Calvary’s first acceptance of cremation as a suitable means of disposition. Scattering of ashes remains verboten.

This Garden appears to be exclusively for inurnment of cremation canisters, and not the entombment of bodies in crypts as is performed in structures called community mausoleums.

The first time I discovered a community mausoleum I did not know what I was walking into. It looked like an office building. I assumed it was some kind of monastery or administrative facility.

I walked in and realized it was basically just a glorified morgue, with one body per drawer labeled with name and dates of the deceased. I did not like it, and I’ve never come to appreciate the setting.

Columbaria, on the other hand, can be pretty cool. Some of those urns are quite elaborate. From the look of its drawing, however, it appears that Calvary’s Garden does not display the urns the way other columbaria do. Will have to check this out.