Homeless in life, nameless in death, Mass Graves in Los Angeles

[Rose Siding]

THE OLDEST cemetery in Los Angeles, opened in 1877, is Evergreen Cemetery in Boyle Heights. Some of the most well known families in Los Angeles — including the Boyles, for whom the neighborhood is named — are buried there. So are thousands of Angelenos whose names we will never know.

As L.A.'s homeless population has grown, so has the number of homeless deaths. The coroner can usually identify the bodies, but most of the time their families don't collect the remains. So once a year, in autumn, the county cremates and buries them in a single grave at Evergreen. Thousands of dead men and women are marked only by small plaques displaying the year they died......

This fall, workers will take almost 1,600 of the containers from the shelves, discard the nametags and pour their contents into a newly dug grave in the same out-of-sight corner of Evergreen Cemetery. (They reuse the boxes.) A plaque reading "2002" will be placed in the ground on top of the grave. A handful of people will be there, including a chaplain, some workers from the morgue — and, if they allow it, me.....

We know who these people were, but we bury them nameless. How much would it take to add their names to their gravestones? Maybe that one small gesture would give them some dignity in death that we never gave them in life.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-evergreen25jun25,0,7159876.story?coll=la-news-comment-editorials

[mourningdove92]

1. How very sad.

this article describes one of my worst nightmares. My brother is currently living on the streets of Fort Worth. He is alchoholic and has chosen to live on the streets, as there are other options for him. I just found out about this a couple of days ago, he was supposed to be in rehab, but he walked out and took to the streets.

After he called me Friday and told me what he had done, my heart just broke.