A two-year wait could be ending soon for Mississippi Gulf Coast families eager to see their loved ones returned to their rightful resting places.

Hurricane Katrina washed out remains from some of the mausoleums at Southern Memorial Park in Biloxi. Now the cemetery is in the middle of a renovation.

Twenty years ago, John Coates helped build a mausoleum at Southern Memorial Park. Now he’s back in Biloxi trying to help put the cemetery back together.

“It’s bad to have to do it. We’re going to try to do everything so the families will feel comfortable with their loved ones that have been buried,” Coates said in an interview with WLOX-TV.

Crews for Ingram Construction, a company that specializes in mausoleum work, are replacing the exterior stone broken by Katrina. Over the past nine months, they’ve rebuilt the Southern Memorial’s retaining wall and put in new sidewalks and columns.

“This whole process could be as sensitive as possible,” said Les Warren, the cemetery’s supervisor.

Warren said Southern Memorial makes an extra effort to involve the families.

“It’s very hard. They’ve already lost them once and to have the storm do what it did was hard on our families. So we’re trying to make it as easy as possible on them,” he said.

Officials at Southern Memorial said the remains that were displaced by Katrina have been temporarily put into another mausoleum. When all the restoration work is done, they plan to re-inter the bodies and have a memorial service for the families.

“I understand that one of the other cemeteries in the other area had their memorial service just recently,” said Warren. “They had gotten repairs done enough that they could do that and now we’re jealous. We really want to try to get ours done so our families can put this behind them and get on with things.”

The contractor said the renovation of Southern Memorial Park should take another two months.