'Today We Are His Family': Teen Volunteers Mourn Those Who Died Alone

[n2doc]

On the drive to Fairview Cemetery in the Boston neighborhood of Hyde Park, six seniors from Roxbury Latin boys' school sit in silent reflection. Mike Pojman, the school's assistant headmaster and senior adviser, says the trip is a massive contrast to the rest of their school day, and to their lives as a whole right now.

Detroit's finances are so tight that unclaimed bodies can wait months or years for a pauper's burial. To help, Perry Funeral Home in Detroit has been holding free memorial services and cut-rate burials for unclaimed remains for years, like this service in 2009.

Today the teens have volunteered to be pallbearers for a man who died alone in September, and for whom no next of kin was found. He's being buried in a grave with no tombstone, in a city cemetery.

"To reflect on the fact that there are people, like this gentleman, who probably knew hundreds or thousands of people through his life, and at the end of it there's nobody there — I think that gets to all of them," Pojman says. "Some have said, 'I just gotta make sure that never happens to me.' "

The students, dressed in jackets and ties, carry the plain wooden coffin, and take part in a short memorial. They read together, as a group:

"Dear Lord, thank you for opening our hearts and minds to this corporal work of mercy. We are here to bear witness to the life and passing of Nicholas Miller.
"He died alone with no family to comfort him.
"But today we are his family, we are here as his sons
"We are honored to stand together before him now, to commemorate his life, and to remember him in death, as we commend his soul to his eternal rest."

more

http://www.npr.org/2016/01/25/463567685/today-we-are-his-family-teen-volunteers-mourn-those-who-died-alone

[FLPanhandle]

1. Nice effort

However, I think directing that energy and effort to the living is a better option.

Either way, it makes the kids think about those at the bottom of the ladder

[Katashi_itto]

2. Yeah your right, just find a hole to dump them in right?

It would save money. Like Flint.

[Human101948]

4. In the garden please!

Every year, Americans who bury relatives in coffins commit to the ground an amount of metal sufficient to construct a new Golden Gate Bridge, wood that could be used to build 1,800 single-family homes and an amount of carcinogenic embalming fluid adequate for filling eight Olympic-size pools, Spade estimates.

Cremations emit 600 million pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere annually — the fossil fuel equivalent of 70,000 cars driving for a full year, she notes.

http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/urban-death-project-aims-turn-dead-bodies-compost-article-1.2184294

[FLPanhandle]

7. As an atheist...

Once a person is dead, who cares what is done with the body?

Cremate it, bury it, compost it, freeze it. Who cares? The living person is dead.

Just saying that there are plenty of living homeless they could help and even talk to, learn from, and understand.

Like I said, it's better than nothing, but using their time and money on the living is a better use.

Just my opinion.

[Human101948]

3. Yes, they should watch "Harold and Maude"

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/harold_and_maude/

[Wilms]

5. That's what came to my mind. n/t

[Brickbat]

6. This seems so medieval to me.

Highly privileged young men bearing the bodies of the friendless and using it as an exercise to ponder the brevity of human life rather than reaching out to lonely people who are still alive.