If an outreach worker has any length of time under the belt in the position, one of the things that they find themselves doing on a far too frequent basis is attending funerals.
Homelessness kills, it's a well-known fact that's backed up by considerable empirical data. Hearing that a friend or acquaintance has died while living on the street is so common that it rarely even raises an eyebrow. And the older in years one is while on the street, the more likely it is they'll die on the street (funeral pictured on the left is for William "Ox" Drescher, a former resident of Nashville's Tent City, who passed away shortly after obtaining housing).
The National Coalition for the Homeless posits that,
"there is a growing consensus that persons aged 50 and over should be included in the 'older homeless' category. Persons 50-65 frequently fall between the cracks of governmental safety nets (and even tho these safety nets are barely capable of helping a person subsist, they are better than the 'nothing' that people experiencing homelessness enjoy while on the streets: SSS); while not technically old enough to qualify for Medicare, their physical health, assaulted by poor nutrition and severe living conditions, may resemble that of a 70 year old."
So dealing with death, funerals, loss, more trauma, and the strangeness that accompanies some of the farewell services held for those on the street who've died becomes, if not routine, certainly familiar to those of us who attend them.
I can usually deal quite well with the death of the individual on the street because I know that for a great many who've passed while homeless, it's probably the end of a long stretch of hopelessness, suffering, severe poverty, and misery of a life spent wanting, wishing and waiting. If you've never experienced this kind of lifestyle, it's very difficult to convey to you the utter despondency and wretchedness that permeates the mind and body on a daily basis.
To add insult to long-term injury, after the end of a life led anonymously while languishing in the alleys and gutters of cities in the richest nation in the world, these individuals then typically end up in "pauper's cemeteries." Just about every major-sized town has one of these cemeteries created specifically for "indigent burials."
Similar to the plain and somewhat forlorn appearance of a standard prison cemetery, these Pauper Cemeteries frequently look a lot like the one in the flick on the right (and many thanks to Champ 1964 for this image). They don't see much in the way of funds for upkeep and usually appear as rundown, neglected graveyards that hold the remains of those our community has long ago kicked to the curb and forgotten about.
Similar to the plain and somewhat forlorn appearance of a standard prison cemetery, these Pauper Cemeteries frequently look a lot like the one in the flick on the right (and many thanks to Champ 1964 for this image). They don't see much in the way of funds for upkeep and usually appear as rundown, neglected graveyards that hold the remains of those our community has long ago kicked to the curb and forgotten about. But each of those graves holds a human being who at one point was most likely loved and cherished by somebody. That they now lie alone, forgotten and ignored has a sadness all its own; the kind of sadness that makes you want to stop what you're doing and tell those close to you in your life that you're damned glad they're there.
Report: Indigent cemetery being improperly used
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) - A Shelby County auditor's report says there is no process to stop funeral homes from using the site for cheap burials for people who weren't poor.
Since the report, county officials say procedures have been tightened and the control of the cemetery has been moved to a different department.
County spokesman Steve Shular told The Commercial Appeal some families were paying funeral homes hundreds or thousands of dollars for headstones and burial at the cemetery
Shular said Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell, who took office Sept. 1, had been looking into problems at the cemetery even before an April report by auditor Richard Davis.
More than 20,000 bodies have been buried at the cemetery since it began operations in 1965, and 108 were buried in January and February.
