5 Feet, Not 6

5 Feet, Not 6

Friday March 27th, 2026

The sun was shining hard today. I drove to the cemetery with my windows down and my AC off. I wasn’t sure what to expect. I was on the way to speak to three Savannah grave diggers. I knew I had a lot of questions and things I was curious to ask but didn’t know how willing they would be to answer.

Torrie Williams, the event coordinator of the Savannah Cemeteries, greeted me in the conference room. She opened her hand and revealed two packs of Now-and-Laters; Grape and strawberry flavored. “I gotta quit eating these.” She said. I grabbed the strawberry pack and put it in my pocket.

Torrie made me feel so safe in her presence. I was so thankful that she allowed me into her space and her work, only after a phone call and a glance at my website. She explained to me how grateful she was that someone expressed interest in the work her and the guys do and that they were very excited to meet me.

She told me to follow her from Bonaventure cemetery over to Greenwich cemetery, only a few minutes away, where Antonio Clarke, Dwayne Kerr, and Javon Chisholm had just dug a grave.

Upon arrival, I shook the guy’s hands; the hands that have helped lay so many to rest. For three men whose day to day focuses so much on life and death, they were some of the jolliest people I’ve ever met in a cemetery.

Antonio has been working at the cemetery for around 8 years. At first, he just needed a job and looked to the city of Savannah, but ended up working at the cemetery, where he found the work to be more compelling than most other positions. He is now Crew Chief, where he oversees people like Dwayne and Javon.

Dwayne is the medium equipment operator. He operates heavy machinery, like the tractors used to dig the graves.

Javon deals with grounds maintenance and burials but finds peace in helping those in times of grief. “They got stuff going on, and I don’t mind helping. I don’t enjoy grieving, but I like to be on hand.”

Torrie, Antonio, Dwayne, Javon, and I stood on a bridge over the pond. Live oaks stood sturdy around us, their Spanish moss cascading down from their branches almost low enough to touch our heads. The graveyard was beautiful, especially in the early spring. Beads of sweat rolled from the men’s foreheads as we spoke.

“Learning how people die makes me wanna take care of myself.” Antonio told me. You hear and see a lot when working a job like this. Over the years working in the cemetery, the guys have seen a lot of visitors come and go. While some graves never get visited by their family members, they’re constantly visited and tended to by these three men. They see who comes, and who doesn’t.

Antonio sadly buried his own brother 2 months ago not too far from where we were standing.

“I get to be with him every day.”

He pointed behind him in the general direction of where his brother was buried.

“I see people visit my brother. It shows me that a lot of things really don’t matter. Just enjoy people and their spirits. And let it go. If they’re here, they’re here and if they’re not they’re not. Don’t dwell on it cuz’ man, once you’re gone, you’re gone.”

He also expressed how especially hard it is when he must dig a smaller grave.

There was a tragic incident a few years ago where a 4-year-old wandered off into a pond and drown.

“Where I’m from,” Antonio said, “you don’t see that many grown men cry, but to see the baby’s dad cry like that affected me. His reaction alone almost brough tears to my eyes.”

Dwayne told me he gets numb to his feelings during the funerals out of necessity. He explained however that it’s rare for him to see people bawling during the services. Instead, he sees more joy and celebration, whatever version it may be. Each of the men mentioned how fascinated they were with the differences in funeral services between culture to culture.

“The Asians, them folks different, they pull up with the cookout! I love it.”

This is when I asked Antonio, Dwayne, and Javon if they practiced any sort of religion themselves. I figured for some reason that to be a gravedigger, you were either super atheist, or some type of a bible-thumper. However, all three had similar answers. They generally believe that some type of higher power must be the reason for “all of this,” but that they weren’t subscribed to any true form of religion. I wonder, after seeing so much death, how that has influenced their answer.

“Okay, but ya’ll do understand that women created the universe and all that, right?” Torrie said before smiling and winking at me. We shared a girl’s laugh.

She paused and collected her thoughts for a second.

“It’s interesting when you start to see how other religions handle things. It comes back to, at the end of the day, this is the end for everybody. So, it doesn’t matter what you believe in, or where you think you’re going, everybody ends up here.” she said.

On the topic of religion, one of the men brought up Jewish burials. They told me that it’s common for Jewish people to be buried inside of a wooden box instead of a traditional coffin. While totally normal, they said it makes “Disinterment” more difficult.

“What’s disinterment?”

Disinterment is the removal of a deceased person's remains from their burial place, often for relocation, cremation, or legal investigation. It requires a legal permit and typically involves a formal application, court order, or funeral director. Antonio explained that when they must dig up a body, they dig just to the point where they reach bones, where then a specialist comes in with tools and a body bag and excavates the bones, reorganizing them in the body bag, making sure that all bones are accounted for before being relocated.

But even sometimes when they aren’t on disinterment, they stumble upon bones. Bonaventure, established in 1846, is 179 years old, making unmarked graves almost inevitable. They were digging one time and dug right through a human skull, splitting it in half. These bones are placed right back where they were found.

Occasionally mother nature decides to do a bit of disinterring herself. When hurricane Mathew came it was a disaster. Bodies were found floating in the water, mausoleums broken, bodies revealed. The men thought back to when a tree fell on one of the small mausoleums during the hurricane. When they pushed the tree away, the arm of a women swung down; her nails still growing. They said she was decorated in jewelry and that her hair was also still growing. It’s fascinating how things, buried long ago, can stay the same for so long. Just because you can’t see it anymore, doesn’t mean it’s not there.

Antonio asked me if I had seen any of the “hooks” on the older graves at Bonaventure. These hooks off the sides of the graves, they used to hold bells that had strings attached to them that lead inside of the coffins just in case they buried someone alive by mistake. This is the origin of the “graveyard shift.” People, often family members, would stay at night to listen for the sound of bells. I’m sure we can attribute the existence of zombies in pop culture to this as well.
I was worried that I’d be overstepping a boundary with my next question, but I had to ask.

“How do you guys want to be buried?”

To my surprise, they erupted with excitement and began to explain.

“I used to think I wanted to go in the ground. My parents are in the wall. So, I thought ‘Oh I wanna go in the wall’, but now my mind is like… I might want to be cremated. So my kids could put me on the mantel or carry me with em’ forever. That changed my mind.” Javon explained. Antonio agreed.

Dwayne was the outlier. “I kinda like the idea of just lying in a bed forever, in the ground, in a casket.”

While I was listening to their responses, I was fascinated with how comfortable they were with death. They spoke only with respect, but with a jarring honesty that would catch the average person off guard. I think if everyone became more comfortable with the end of life, we could all live as better people while we still have the opportunity to.

I expected to leave the interaction maybe a bit shaken or existential about life. Instead, I left with a four new friends and a changed perspective.

“Also, it’s five feet deep, not six.”