By Jarret Liotta
Sharing an emotional message to love, respect and appreciate people while they’re still here, even if we don’t know them, Los Angeles County officials and members of the public took part in an indigent burial ceremony on Thursday morning, Dec. 12.
For almost 130 years the county has conducted an interfaith ceremony for indigent and unclaimed people who died within the county lines. While they strive to identify the dead and reunite them with relations, more than half remain unknown or leave no personal connections to families or friends.
“This is such an amazing tradition (and) to know that we’re going to honor them just speaks to my heart, speaks to my spirit,” said Rev. Chris Ponnet, director of spiritual care with Los Angeles General Medical Center, who knew some of these individuals when they were receiving treatment at the center.
About 100 members of the public went to the Los Angeles County Crematory and Cemetery in Boyle Heights to honor 1,865 people, now ashes, who were laid to rest in a single communal grave. A dozen clergy members from a spectrum of faiths presided, along with officials including District 4 Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn.
“I think this ceremony is one of the most important things we do,” she said, noting it was the first time the public was in full attendance since the pandemic, though the event was also live-streamed.
“They may be complete strangers to us, but we know they are no less worthy of our recognition,” Hahn said.
“We don’t know enough about the lives of the people we are laying to rest today, to do their memories justice, but we know many of them were unhoused, some were children, many were immigrants to this country, far from families that loved and missed them,” she said.
“Many were sick,” Hahn said. “Some suffered mental illness that made their lives painful and difficult. Almost all of them were very poor and for one reason or another they had no loved ones to claim their bodies when they passed.”
People came to pay their respects for different reasons, including Merrily Weiss of Sherman Oaks.
“We’ve been doing this for about 10 years,” she said. “I feel compelled to. I feel like this: It just feels important to give community to those without community, to acknowledge people that weren’t acknowledged in their lifetime — perhaps at earlier points in their lifetime, but not at the end.”
The sky turned overcast as the ceremony began, with a soft, chilled wind pulling old, brown leaves from nearby trees and scattering them across the ground.
The nonprofit Street Symphony”s Chamber Singers provided several melodic a cappella songs to set the mood and accentuate the tone of the ceremony.
“We believe that there’s a responsibility for our community to provide, to honor the lives of people who have passed, regardless of if we knew them or not,” said Director Amy Fogerson, noting this was the group’s eighth time performing for the event. “These people deserve to have a safe and beautiful place for their rest too.”
Clergy members shared thoughts and prayers in several different languages, with Jerry Arvayo of the Kateri Circle performing a sage ceremony, and Tamara Grace, a chaplain with the medical center, performing on crystal healing bells.
At the end of the ceremony each attendee was given a single white rose, which they placed on the communal grave.
For Seth Romatelli of Hollywood the ceremony had layers of meaning, having just lost his mother, Marcia Romatelli, 77, to breast cancer last month.
“My mom died last month in Massachusetts … surrounded by family and friends and love and community,” he said, “and I wanted to bring some of that to these people.” Having attended this ceremony about 15 years ago, he said it had grown and changed considerably.
“There might have been 30 people here, no cameras, no tent … The mood was much darker,” he said. “This is more appropriate, celebratory and respectful.”
Pamela Prickett, co-author of a newly released book, “The Unclaimed: Abandonment and Hope in the City of Angels,” which documents the county’s work with anonymous deaths and some of the reasons behind them, was in attendance with her co-author Stefan Timmermans.
She described the burial ceremony as a sort of paradox.
“On one hand it’s a story about the most vulnerable of our county,” she said. “It’s also a story about people showing up, strangers showing up for strangers, coming together and kind of creating community on this day, stepping in to play the role of family for people who at this moment do not have any.”
Prickett said people attend a ceremony like this for many reasons, including that it just feels right to do so, as well as to be around others who feel the same way. “There are also people who are suffering from their own unresolved ambiguous losses and coming to a ceremony like this can sometimes be therapeutic,” she said.
Dr. Christina Ghaly, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, reminded people to focus on honoring the living.
“I try to remember, and I hope we all can, that as much as it’s important to pay respects to people after they’ve passed, I also hope that we can pay respects to the thousands of people among us who are still alive who are struggling,” she said.
Ghaly cited those who are poor, alone, homeless, challenged by mental illness or substance abuse — and expressed the hope “that we might find ways to engage with them and to show love to them and compassion to them while they’re still with us.”
Jarret Liotta is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer and photographer.