There is much anonymity in a name.
That first name, the name given at birth when a person is just a small, squirming bundle of possibilities, when neither the parents nor society they are born to knows who they are or what they could become. The name that becomes their legal identity until such time as they choose to change it.
Formal. Official. Human, but distant. An assessment of superficial traits assigned by others, through the lens of their experience.
Faith leaders and representatives of cultures and creeds gathered in Mt. Olivet Cemetery in the pale afternoon sunlight on Oct. 5 to read a list of 278 names, one for each of the men and women whose remains now rest in an anonymous grave marked with a plaque that reads, “Gone but not forgotten.”
These remains belonged to 278 men and women who died in King County between 2014 and the present, either because their family could not afford to bury them or they had family at all. So dozens of mourners and a fistful of videographers, photographers and journalists stood witness to the reading of the names.
“We come to connect for them and with them,” said Barbara Gilreath.
Gilreath is a part-time chaplain for the King County Sheriff’s Department and Seattle Fire Department and professional grief counselor who attended the past three of the biennial ceremonies for the indigent dead.
It’s her calling to inform and support families whose loved ones have died. She knocks on doors in King County, but she also traveled to Mississippi in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, living in a church and offering aid to those who needed it.
She’s had practice keeping her tears at bay, she said. Not so for several in the audience for whom the litany of the dead stabbed like 278 needles, each one a reminder of the enormity of what was lost and how these people were treated when they were alive.
Die De Janel understood.
Janel grew up in Washington, but quit the 9-to-5 life to go traveling up and down the West Coast in the 1975 VW van that she now calls home.
At the memorial, she wore a rainbow of hair ties to bind an individual lock of her short hair and a sign reading “Free Hugs” pinned to her jacket. Janel gives good hugs.
But there are days that she hasn’t had an opportunity to shower in a while, when she looks a bit more disheveled climbing out of her van. She knows the sideways glances, the posture that people adopt when the sight of poverty makes them uncomfortable and they rush past, eyes forward, faces studiously blank.
“They don’t see the homeless,” Janel said.
It was important for Janel, who sees the walls of her van as thin protection from the streets, to attend the funeral when she heard about it. To give some recognition to the people who wore those names, to whom she would have offered a hug if they were still there to accept one.
Perhaps it’s that anonymity of a name that weighs so heavy. It’s a title that hints at a whole that will never be known. Officiants of several denominations of Christianity, a rabbi, a representative of Asian Pacific Islanders and Native Americans shared the task of reading the names before offering words to the living to honor the dead.
Betty Patu, a school board member of the Seattle Public Schools, sang a song in Samoan — “Oli oli a-unei” — about giving glory to God. A prayer was offered up in Tlingit asking for strength “not to fight my brother, but my greatest enemy, myself.” A Catholic pastoral associate recited a traditional benediction in Spanish, not her native tongue, but likely that of at least one of the people behind one of the names.
They made a valiant attempt to represent the 278, but there was no way to know how the deceased wanted to be remembered. Would these efforts to pay respects instead be an affront committed by burning a body, praying to the wrong god or for praying to one at all?
The Medical Examiner’s Office at King County works hard to give the deceased something more, to find those who knew them as something else, someone who knew them by a nickname bestowed in a happy memory or an endearment reserved only for them.
It takes three weeks to seek out next of kin, notify them if possible, and review the finances of the deceased. Should a family member come forward after the burial, which takes place every two years, the ashes are relocated and returned.
At the close of the ceremony, guests waited in line to sign their names to an attendance book near the plaque. It is so similar to the marker from 2014, 2012 and before, distinguished by the presence of fresh, bright flowers and origami art stuck on wooden skewers folded by elementary school students.
By the end of August, 37 homeless people had died on the streets of Seattle. With the onset of fall that number will likely rise, and some of them will not have family members to tend to their remains. In two years there will be a new plaque, new flowers and new prayers.
It will be for those who remain to wonder why.