An Aiea couple intent on putting flowers on the family burial plot in Kaneohe was shocked over the weekend to find the graves excavated and coffins exposed.

Junior Stowers, 39, and his fiancee, Mele Maikai, arrived at about 9:20 a.m. Saturday to visit the graves of his mother, Sauao Tafua Stowers, who died in 2004, and aunt and uncle at Valley of the Temples Memorial Park.

The grave was “;wide open,”; said Stowers. “;It was like bringing back memories from when she passed away.”;

At first the unearthed caskets and displaced grave markers confused him, he conceded.

“;I went around in circles about four times not knowing that was my mom's grave site,”; he said.

Stowers and Maikai said they were told by a cemetery official that in preparing a new grave site for a Saturday morning burial just two inches from Stowers' mother's plot, her vault slid into it, so they dug up the Stowers family plot.

“;She said, 'I'm sorry. It's my mistake. We should have called you,'”; Maikai said.

Steve Hawley, Valley of the Temples Memorial Park's director of operations, said workers began digging the new grave Friday, but it was too rainy and muddy. He said they resumed digging Saturday but that an hour and a half before the burial, there was so much ground water filling the hole that the vault “;just kind of slid over.”;

“;We would have called,”; he said, but it was an emergency and they had to dig around it.

“;The family just happened to come to put flowers,”; Hawley said. “;It had just happened. We are very sorry.”;

Maikai said: “;They should have called us, not to just see it that way. It's the mourning process, the grieving process all over.

“;Just morally and ethically it was incorrect,”; she said. “;We don't want this to happen to another family.”;

The couple said there was no deep water inside the grave, just a couple of inches at most in one corner of the hole, and as photos they took show, the ground was relatively dry as workers dug around and moved the three vaults.

The couple stood to the side as the burial ceremony for a newly deceased man took place later that morning, and waited to witness the reburial of Stowers' mother, aunt and uncle.

“;The whole family is distraught,”; Maikai said.

The couple returned Sunday to find the grave sites covered with mud.

Hawley said the sod could not be cut because it was too wet and rainy Saturday, so it was re-sodded yesterday morning.

Stowers said he has been haunted by nightmares and unable to concentrate at work.

“;In my mind I'm thinking, 'Poor Mama,'”; he said. “;I'm really emotional. It's like reliving the moment again.”;

Stowers said he will go again to visit her grave before New Year's. “;I pray every night now and ask God to help me with this pain.”;