I have worked in cemeteries, setting gravestones, and my brother has worked as a gravedigger AND a stone setter. Here's some of what we've learned.

1. Embalming keeps you looking nice only until you're buried. After that, Certain Changes take place and you lose your good looks. Eventually, you'll return to the soil from whence you sprang. (Don't ask me about what the embalming chemicals do to the soil. I haven't studied it, and I'm not at all sure that the nutrients your body returns offsets what the chemicals do.)

2. Bodies decay at a set rate, depending upon a lot of different things. Soil moisture (for buried bodies) is one variable among many. Acidopore, the waxy stuff that can cover bodies placed in certain soils, is a mess to deal with for a gravedigger. The younger the body, the less you're likely to find after earth burial -- often there are no traces of an infant.

3. If you dug up a body, the most you're likely to find is the skeleton and, perhaps, some remnants of clothing, jewelry, etc. Under most conditions, skin and organs don't survive very long in an average grave. (Hey, we're talking in terms of years here.)

4. Yes, if you keep air and water away from the body it will last longer. And yes, I'm aware that bodies have been exhumed that look like the day they were buried (Medgar Evers, for instance). These are the exceptions.

5. Earth burial and cremation are NOT the only options for disposal of the dead. The Jains, for instance, have an interesting method in their Towers of Silence, as do the Navajo (how do you dispose of a body when you're culturally forbidden to touch it?). More than a few American Indian nations placed their dead in a tree or on a raised platform. And there's always been burial at sea.

6. ALL of our customers must have been satisfied, since they've never complained about our work.

7. You might find it morbid; I find it fascinating.