On learning an underappreciated but vitally important skill.
It has been almost a decade since I was called on to help dig my first grave. By my count I’m up to six now, but it could possibly be more.
I was 19 years old and in my second year at the University of Auckland. My uncle Ted rang me to say that Aunty Waiora’s husband, Garth Port, had passed away and we’d be going to the tangi at our marae in Herekino. Uncle Ted and my cousin Nate picked me up in his silver Holden Rodeo ute and we made the four-and-a-half-hour journey north from Tāmaki Makaurau.
It was the day before the nehu when we arrived. Uncle Ted warned Nate and I on the way up that we might have to lend a hand digging the grave, as most of Uncle Garth and Aunty Waiora’s whānau lived overseas and they were light on manpower. That evening, we were sitting outside the kāuta when our Uncle Tai checked that we were willing to help dig the grave in the morning. We both looked at each other before somewhat hesitantly agreeing.
“Choice, we’ll see you at about 5am at the urupā,” Tai said.
I remember feeling unsure about what to expect and having a mixture of nerves and excitement about being asked to help with an often underappreciated, yet vital part of the proceedings. I also remember feeling a strange sense of irony about the fact I couldn’t remember ever meeting Uncle Garth, yet here I was about to help dig his grave. It felt like I had graduated from tea towels and the hāngī pit onto more serious marae business.
Nate and I woke up early on the day of the nehu to get dropped off at the urupā. It was around 5am and although it was officially spring, it was still cold enough to see your breath. At about 5:15am, we saw the lights of Tai’s old red Ford Courier shining through the dark fog. He parked up and went to the back of his ute, where he grabbed a couple of shovels and spades, a can of fluorescent pink spray paint, and a piece of paper with a few measurements roughly scribbled on it.
“See ya later boys. Good luck,” said Uncle Ted as he drove off back to the marae.
The sun was finally starting to rise and painted the sky a deep shade of royal blue and purple. Our eyes began to adjust to the faint amount of light as Tai fumbled with his piece of paper, torch, and spray can, marking four pink corners on the grass.
“Alright bros, those are our marks, now we just have to dig at least six feet down,” Tai said laughing as he rolled a cigarette.
Tai demonstrated how to remove the top layer of grass while keeping it intact. Nate and I then took turns slicing through the soil with our spades and carefully removing each square of sod. We had just finished removing the top layer when another uncle, Croc, showed up. He had a ciggie hanging out of his mouth and was wearing navy blue overalls with gumboots that looked as though they’d seen more than their fair share of holes. He grabbed a shovel and began scooping out the dirt with bent knees, a straight back, driving with his hips and exerting as little effort as possible. It might have looked a little funny, but it soon became clear to me that Croc knew what he was doing. With all his experience, Croc had seemingly perfected self-preservation while maintaining maximum grave-digging efficiency. I still use his method to this day.
Over the course of the next hour, we all took turns breaking the soil with our spades and piling the loose dirt into a mound with our shovels. The sun was higher in the sky and sweat dripped from our brows. Another uncle, Buffy, was driving past the urupā and slowed down to talk with the two uncles.
“Come on bro, you know you can’t drive past the urupā and not help dig a hole,” laughed Tai. I thought it must have been an unwritten rule for those living on Tatana Road, with the only way out being past the urupā.
“Fuck,” said Buffy, succumbing to the moral obligation. He turned in and parked his ute, foregoing his morning plans to instead help with the digging.
Buffy walked over to us and offered a hongi. He was a large man with dark skin, calloused hands, and was missing his two front teeth. He reminded me of my Smith whānau on my Nana’s side. She was from Manukau, while my grandfather was from the next settlement over, Rangikohu. That day, while getting to know my new uncles over a grave, I learnt that like any good neighbours, my relations from the two places didn’t always see eye to eye.
It was soon 8.30am, which meant we had approximately two hours before the church service began and roughly three hours before people started arriving at the urupā. The hole was deeper and the loose dirt had turned to clay. It stuck to our gumboots and shovels, making everything feel heavier and more slippery. Despite the physical demands and being a relatively morbid occasion, our time spent digging was filled with quick jibes at one another and hearty laughs.
I stared into the hole as it grew deeper and realised that before that day, I had never considered how deep a six foot hole looked, nor had I thought about being in a grave, especially one that wasn’t for me.
“Come on boy, time for you and your blue bands to get in there,” laughed Buffy, referring to my suspiciously clean cityslicker Warehouse gumboots.
Finding the courage, I jumped into the hole and glanced at the four walls of clay that surrounded me, realising this would likely someday be my eternity, not that I’ll be alive to see it. I began breaking up the clay with the spade, and carving away at the walls, trying to make them as straight as possible. It brought me a sense of pride and joy to be learning such a necessary skill.
Eventually, I stuck my arms up to signal I had done my dash and was yanked out by one of the uncles. Another hour or so of digging passed before we finally reached six feet. We spent some time tidying the hole, making sure everything was smooth and square. Tai and Buffy went for a drive and returned with some punga, which we used to line the hole and placed a few more over the mound of dirt to make it more presentable. Two large timber posts were laid across the hole, which would hold the coffin before it was lowered into the ground.
Once everything was ready for the service, we retreated to the carpark for a well-earned cold Steinlager, or Lion Red in Buffy’s case (the whole dig, my other two uncles wouldn’t stop giving him shit for being a brown bottle drinker, as most men from that part of the country instead preferred “green grenades”). I had never felt so deserving of a beer and cigarette before. We were two or three deep by the time we heard the car horns beeping from across the valley. It was the locals’ way of letting the gravediggers know the church service had finished.
“They’re on the way. Tidy up the bottles quickly, boys,” said one of the uncles.
We sprang up, quickly stashed the booze and found a shovel or fence post to lean on, fading into the crowd as they arrived. The procession got to the gate and Uncle Garth was carried into the urupā with karanga ringing out. The service finished and the grave diggers were ushered in to help lower the coffin down. We fed the straps through the handles on the coffin before sliding out the wooden blocks. Uncle Garth was slowly lowered, little by little, as the women wailed and the priest hailed karakia. People lined up in single file and walked past the hole, throwing dirt onto the coffin as they said their final goodbyes.
“Thank you boys, it looked wonderful,” Aunty Waiora said, holding a wrought smile with tears in her eyes.
After a majority of the crowd was back at the marae for the final formalities, the gravediggers picked up our shovels again, ready to fill in the six foot hole we had just dug out hours earlier. We began raking and scooping the dirt back in, packing it down every so often so the mound of dirt wasn’t too high afterwards. It took a while but thankfully, there were a few more hands on deck for this part. Finally, the grave was filled in, with a heap of dirt covered in flowers and a white cross denoting where it was.
“Time for a wash,” said Croc.
The tools were loaded onto the back of the one of the utes and we made the short trip down to the awa, where we washed the tools and ourselves, while finishing the rest of the beers we stashed earlier. I could tell this was another tikanga, something about removing that tapu over our tools and ourselves, helping us to transition back into the state of noa, or normal being.
As I sat there sipping beer with my aching feet in the cold water of my awa, I felt an immense sense of accomplishment, like I’d earned another feather in my cap. But there was something particularly satisfying about this one, more so than learning how to put in a fence post or skin a cow.
We left the river slightly more inebriated than when we arrived, ensuring we stayed there long enough that the final karakia and formalities would be done at the marae. Clearly, I was with trained professionals, as our timing was perfect. Almost like they could smell us coming, the ladies out the back were loading kai onto the table by the kāuta for us diggers. We sat there and ate like kings, with our every need being tended to by the ringawera. Besides my dad’s tangi, it was the first time I could remember being waited on like that at our marae.
Since that tangi, I have dug many more graves in numerous urupā. There have been times I have dug for complete strangers, and other times for close family. One of the most memorable was a grave on top of a hill at the back of Tawhitinui Marae in Ōmokoroa. The person who had passed away was a relation of my girlfriend at the time. I had never met him before but there I was, in the pouring rain and wind, helping to dig his grave. Even though my hands were numb and the rain felt like needles piercing my face, I knew my presence was greatly appreciated.
“Mean mana points,” I remember my ex-father-in-law saying at the time.
Another memorable grave was for my Aunty Iritana Wharewaka, who was my paternal grandfather Eruera Ratana’s sister. She was buried at St. Gabriel’s urupā in Pawarenga, where my grandfather was born. The ground was a mixture of gravel and clay. It was one of the hardest graves I ever dug but one of the lightest coffins to carry. Aunty Iri was 92 years old when she passed away and had spent over a decade living in Rawene Hospital with mate wareware. It was surreal being able to dig a hole in that urupā and walking her up the goat track, like they did in the old days. I remember hearing about how tapu that place was when I was growing up. My dad would always make us take off all of our jewellery before we went in and leave our phones and sunglasses in the car.
The most emotional I have ever been while digging a grave was for my cousin and one of my closest friends Kereta Tatana. He passed away suddenly in a diving accident and it was a shock for us all. We buried him at his whānau urupā in Herekino and safe to say, more than one tear was shed that day.
Something I learnt during Kereta’s tangi was the belief that if you dig the hole, the person you dug it for will come to fill it. There were fears at the time that Kereta might be buried together with his brother, who also passed away at the same time but was getting buried at another urupā. It was a nervous wait for us diggers that day but I always had a feeling the cuz would come back to Herekino to rest.
Reflecting on my youth and the numerous tangi I have been to, I think of how much gravediggers are taken for granted. It used to seem a given that there would be a group of men with the appropriate tools and knowledge who are readily available and willing to carry out the seemingly thankless task of digging a grave. Given the focus of any tangi is generally – and rightfully so – the person who passed away, I doubt many people even really stop to consider the actual digging of the grave.
Speaking generally, the only time gravediggers come into the spotlight is when things go wrong. I’ve heard of stories where graves have been too small and families have had to watch their loved ones be lowered into the ground, be pulled out again as the diggers try to make the hole the right size, only for the coffin to flip when being lowered. I’ve seen gravediggers off their faces at a tangi doing spontaneous mumbled haka and trying to jump in the grave. I’ve been at tangi where diggers have had drunken punch ups. I’ve heard of holes being dug where they shouldn’t have and people knocking on coffin doors with their shovels, or others not being buried as deep as they should have. There have even been times where the walls of a grave have started to collapse in on themselves too, with people narrowly avoiding injury.
What I’ve learnt is that every urupā and every foreman has a different tikanga or way of doing things. Some dig the holes to exact measurements, while others just make sure it’s a big enough rectangle to fit the coffin in. Some say four feet looks deep enough, while others will be exact to the nearest millimetre. Generally, every older grave digger has an innate ability to take the piss out of you without thought. What they all have in common though, is a humble sense that what they are doing is a job that carries a lot of mana. It can often be an underappreciated task but it is undeniably a vital one when it comes to tangi. It’s pretty hard to bury someone with no grave.
I now have an immense appreciation for the art of digging a grave and the tikanga that goes with it. I remember reading The Book Thief and wondering what the content of The Grave Digger’s Handbook might have been – I now have a pretty fair idea. There is something oddly reassuring about the knowledge I now possess and knowing that if required, I can confidently help dig a grave. It’s a skill that I hope to pass down to the younger men in my whānau. Although it’s usually a job left for the ahi kaa, this city slicker’s gumboots (now unwashed Skellerup steel caps) have dug their fair share of holes. For a select few who know, that fact has some mana in it.