Polaneczky: Family had to move deceased son's casket to satisfy cemetery

Matt Stewart was 25 when he died suddenly and tragically. He was buried at All Saints Cemetery in Newtown. His parents, Jim and Rosemary, selected a gravesite right next to the access road so they could easily find their son in the decades to come. They believed it would be his final resting place.

But because of a mistake by All Saints, the Stewarts had to move Matt's casket to a different grave nine months after his burial.

"They made a horrible time worse for us," says Jim, 56,  speaking for his wife, Rosemary, 56, and their surviving children - Danielle, 24, and Erin, 21.

The Stewarts prefer not to discuss the circumstances of Matt's death on Dec. 13, 2015, but they speak at length about their funny, loving, complicated first-born child. "Matt wasn't black and white; he was gray, like me," says Rosemary. "We could talk about everything. We argued all the time, and he drove us crazy. But he was ours."

The Stewarts chose to bury Matt at All Saints, a mile from their home. It's one of 12 cemeteries owned by the Philadelphia Archdiocese but run by publicly traded StoneMor Partners LP, which owns or manages 317 cemeteries nationwide. All Saints is practically new; Matt's burial was among the cemetery's first.

The Stewarts say an All Saints saleswoman pushed them hard to buy additional family plots when they arranged Matt's burial. (Local families complained last year to the Inquirer about StoneMor's sales tactics.) They purchased two double plots for themselves and their daughters, right next to Matt's single plot.

Two months after Matt's funeral, the Stewarts selected an upright monument for his grave from Beechwood Memorials in Doylestown. Through a Beechwood rep, they learned that All Saints' rules forbade upright monuments close to the road because of potential damage from vehicles.

The Stewarts say they were adamant from the start that they wanted a monument large and beautiful enough to honor Matt and that the saleswoman never told them it wasn't permitted.

For months, they negotiated with All Saints. But every commonsense, compassionate option they suggested was rejected.

Last July, the Stewarts agreed to a miserable compromise: They would move Matt's casket from his single plot into half of a double plot they had bought. All Saints agreed to buy back the single plot where Matt had been buried. But that left the family short one grave for future needs. However, they were not permitted to purchase a new single plot next to their other purchases; it had to be a double. So they now own one more plot than they'll need.

"It's all about money to them," says Jim.

The Stewarts wanted advance notice of Matt's disinterment so they could be present for it. They also wanted time alone with his casket before it was reburied.

But on Aug. 1,  they were given just hours' notice. They scrambled to rearrange work schedules  - Jim is an IT manager, Rosemary is a nanny – but by the time they got to the site, Matt's casket had been moved. And they never got time alone with their son: Four All Saints employees hovered nearby the whole time.

"We were too exhausted to argue anymore," says Rosemary.

Matt's headstone was at last placed in December, and the Stewarts are now ready to go public about how they were treated. They want other grieving families to be warned.

"All Saints refused to be reasonable. They took advantage of our grief," says Jim.

A StoneMor executive told me he had not known about the Stewarts' problem and felt terrible about it.

"We just want to reiterate that we fully acknowledge our mistake and we truly apologize," says Jonathan Ger, a regional vice president of sales. "We are working hard to do all we can to address this."

What might help in these cases, says Joe Hevener, co-owner of Beechwood Memorials, is advocacy from the Philadelphia Archdiocese when families run into cemetery trouble.

"The archdiocese owes it to [families] to hear their grievances," says Hevener. "These people are entering into contractual agreements at a very vulnerable time in their lives. They need the archdiocese to back them up."

Archdiocesan spokesman Kenneth Gavin says cemetery complaints can be directed to the archdiocese's general services number – 215-587-3633. Callers will then be referred to the right person for help.

When Jim Stewart left his message with someone in that office last year, though, a StoneMor employee called him back. And the heartache resumed.

"Losing Matthew broke our hearts," he says. "Dealing with All Saints broke them all over again."