by James Coulter
Xavier may have never walked the earth, but that does not stop his mother, Diana Koloc, from treating him as her son. Even when he passed away on Nov. 14, 2009, as a stillborn baby 38 and a half weeks into her pregnancy, she still considered him as much of a son as her three other children.
“I carried him his entire life,” Diana said. “I loved him his entire life. I felt him move. I felt his hiccups. My son, Maximus kissed his belly and told him good night every night until he died.”
Nearly 14 years after her son’s death, Diana stumbled upon a shocking discovery while visiting the Lake Wales Cemetery. A few weeks ago, she visited Xavier’s grave site, only to discover that it had gone missing.
Turned out that the grass and sod had grown over his grave marker. Her sons dug where the tombstone was located and found it buried several inches in the ground. Diana suspected it might have been covered up by debris from fresh graves dug around his.
This was not the first time something like this had happened to her son’s grave. About five years ago, Diana and her family faced a similar problem.
“At the time, the cemetery manager agreed that dirt had been placed over it,” she explained. “So I paid for it to be dug and placed up so it was at the level of what the ground was, but it happened again.”
Diana went to the cemetery’s office to address the issue. She was informed that the cemetery was not responsible for fixing or maintaining graves, and she was given the business card of a department in the city to speak to.
So, Diana visited the office of the city official who helps oversee that responsibility. She was informed that because her son’s grave was located on a slope near a retention pond, it had been buried due to runoff. Nevertheless, she was told even the city was not responsible for maintaining grave sites.
“The city does not have any responsibility or obligation to do anything about runoff on graves,” Diana said. “She was adamant that it was a slope and she would speak with her director and see for themselves, but the city had no responsibility for the tombstones…People come and complain about broken stones and other complaints. But it is not the city’s responsibility.”
Diana was given a copy of the rights and responsibilities of the city and cemetery that are given to everyone who purchases a plot.
“I know you were supposed to read it, but I can tell you that when you have to bury your son, you’re not going to read the city’s rights or responsibilities,” she said.
The person Diana talked to stated that she was a mother too, but she was also a city employee and could only tell her what they could and would not do.
“From my perspective, she may be a mother, but she is not the mother of a child who had died, and there is a difference when you are talking about the graves at the cemetery,” Diana said. “So to go to the city and hear her say she is a mom too, it’s not the same thing. We can talk about being moms in the ballfield and school system, but we cannot talk about being a mom at the cemetery.”
Diana was not angry, but she recalls many people attempting to console her in her grief with similar platitudes following her son’s passing. She recalls how one person told her that at least it wasn’t one of her living children who passed away. Another example was the time that someone told her that he did not count because he never actually lived in her home.
“What I felt from the city was that he did not matter,” she said. “As a mom in grieving, he does matter. He changed me, he may never have taken a breath, but he changed me and put me on a different course.. Xavier was named after a missionary that saved 2 million people. And my precious eight-pound baby answered the call to minister without taking a breath. He fulfilled his purpose.”
Her husband, Joe, insists that the cemetery bears some responsibility, as it is required to maintain upkeep that would otherwise prevent such incidents from occurring, and that its negligence led to their son’s buried grave marker.
“Overtime, the grass grows over them, but unless you trim in around them, it will encroach over any concrete surface in Florida, that is what grass does,” he said. “And so, what they are not doing is edging or trimming around it to keep the surrounding area lower.”
Diana called a local monument company, and they told her that when the grave is excavated, the dirt is not removed from the cemetery, but is leveled out.
Diana and her family hope to move forward with the matter and see how they can have the issues with her son’s grave addressed.
“We are just hoping that they will do a better job. That if a person is handling a problem, they will do it and make sure it is taken care of,” she said. “I will give [the city] the opportunity to be compassionate, all they would need to do is have someone with shovels to lower the surrounding area. It’s a simple issue that wouldn’t require a professional company to raise the gravestones.
